Remote Circa £60,000 FTE depending on experience p.a.Location: Yorkshire/ home-working
Terms: This role is advertised on a permanent full-time basis, however we encourage flexible working and we are open to candidates suggesting viable alternatives.
Salary: Circa £60,000 FTE depending on experience
Are you passionate about making the world a better place? By improving the creative resilience of children, young people and business? And in so doing, growing the resilience of a more circular economy that finds creative solutions to some of our greatest challenges?
Have you got what it takes to lead an organisation that does exactly that?
IVE is a training organisation and educational charity with a 25-year track record. Our vision is for a world made better by creativity.
Our Mission is to unleash creativity within individuals, the economy and across communities. We summarise our work as ‘Just add creativity’.
We are Pioneering and Daring. We bring Curiosity and Insight. We pledge Integrity and Empathy.
IVE exists to empower people to drive positive change. Working in partnership with others, IVE creates greater opportunities, in some of our most deprived areas, for this to happen. We advocate for leaders across the business community to listen to the perspectives of diverse groups of young people and acknowledge the value of their creativity in the circular economy.
What we do
IVE is all about what we call ‘Applied Creativity’. Applied creativity is the everyday creativity we use to be resilient human beings. It enables us to come up with new ideas and subsequently it drives innovation. It teaches us not to fear failure in the pursuit of success. Applying our everyday creativity to all sorts of problems ensures we can rely on ourselves to find solutions easily. Our applied-creativity training programmes teach young people how to use simple process-based systems to work collaboratively with others to generate creative solutions to the problems that matter to them.
Who we are looking for
In preparation for the imminent retirement of the outgoing incumbent Rosi Lister, and at an exciting point of transition that will see IVE transition from a recent history of national agency funding into a more agile, modern, self-sustaining charitable business, the IVE Board of trustees is now actively searching for a suitably dynamic and experienced successor.
We are looking for a commercially-astute and partnership-focused Executive Director who possesses an entrepreneurial spirit, self-reliance and is always looking for new opportunities to drive the organisation forward, extending its reach and amplifying its impact.
This role will suit a leader with a proven track record within either the education, charity, youth or creative sectors. However, having recently established a trading arm in order to extend our Applied Creativity training into the world of business, this role might equally suit someone with a commercial background.
We are looking for a strategic thinker with well-rounded leadership experience. You will be someone with experience in driving continuous improvement, who will foster a positive sense of team within a geographically-and home-working context; driving excellence, and able to deliver change at pace. Your approach will be collaborative and proactive and you’ll be able to balance the demands of a role that is both strategic and hands-on.
We are keen to welcome a diverse range of experiences and perspectives, and diversity, inclusion, and equal access are fundamental priorities for us as an organisation. We constantly seek to improve our approach and foster a friendly, positive work environment supported by a culture underpinned by respect and fairness. We particularly welcome applications from disabled and black, asian and minority ethnic candidates as well as applications from LGB, trans and non-binary candidates as underrepresented people within our organisation.
About the role
This role is very much about change management. Having received regular funding from a national funding agency for more than a decade, IVE is set to become a self-sufficient modern charity that employs a mixed-model business approach. This includes winning competitive, publicly-funded tenders and contracts, securing grants from trusts and foundations and, through a recently established trading arm, using a ‘pay it forward’ approach to generating commercial sales; the profits from which go toward our charitable work.
Our new strategy ‘Unleashing the power of Creativity 2022 – 2025’ sets out a very focused and ambitious programme of work that builds upon our quarter-of-a-century long history whilst very much taking us into the future.
We have restructured in order to reduce overheads and – as a result of post-pandemic working practices – have decided that we no longer need a permanent physical office space. During April we will appoint a new reduced core staff team of five people. Along with the new Executive Director, it is anticipated that the new team will comprise a Programme Director, a Marketing & Business Development Director, a Finance & Operations Manager and a Business Development Officer; retaining key knowledge capital wherever possible. The majority of our training and project delivery will be delivered by a team of established freelance associates.
IVE benefits from a strong Board of nine trustees currently Chaired by Rashik Parmar MBE, CEO at the BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT and formerly VP Technology for IBM in EMEA.
Please submit a recent CV along with a covering letter detailing why you are interested in the role and how you fulfil the required experience, skills and personal qualities set out in the person specification.
Applications to be sent to hello@weareive.org
Deadline for applications Friday 17th February 2023 at mid-day
Interviews are anticipated to take place on-line W/C 6th March 2023
IVE Executive Director Job_description