Cultural Strategy Associate (Contracted) - Brocade Studio
Robert Burack
Cultural Strategy Associate (Part-Time)
Non-profit arts organizations, museums, and other purpose-driven cultural organizations face complex challenges as they work to offer visitors and communities meaningful experiences.
Brocade Studio is seeking a part-time Associate to join our cultural team in providing interpretive planning and related services, with an emphasis on cultural projects that highlight or convey the experience of Black communities or honor individual African Americans.
Join us as we advance many of the most exciting and meaningful park and public space, museum, and cultural projects around the country.
About Brocade
Brocade Studio is a growing consultancy that serves purpose-driven organizations (typically, nonprofits) by providing strategy, facilitation, interpretive planning, and analytics services.
Our cultural team works to give shape and voice to new narratives through interpretive planning (developing plans for the visitor experience), strategic and business planning, and exhibit development (can include writing and editing).
Our recent work for cultural organizations includes:
Developing an interpretive plan for playwright August Wilson’s birth home in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the plan offered a pathway to designing a Black-centered, community-based arts education center and historic house.
Developing an interpretive plan for a new 308-acre public park in Raleigh, North Carolina; the land has a layered history — of hunting, gathering, and potential cultivation among Indigenous people, of enslavement at a major plantation, and as the site of the state's first mental health facility. Brocade’s work is to develop a plan for how these histories should be conveyed at the site.
Partnership with a flagship art museum in the American South to develop a strategic plan that positions the museum to lead on racial equity and a follow-up plan that established the museum as a leader in data-driven governance
Facilitation of campus and community sessions for a university in Atlanta, GA, focused on ways to honor individuals whose enslaved labor built the university’s original campus
Exhibition re-design support services for a historic house in New York City focused on a prominent African American inventor
Members of our team are based in Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Richmond, and Toronto, and work from home or coworking offices. Our three principal consultants are joined by a constellation of subcontracted collaborators.
About the Role
As a Cultural Strategy Associate, you would contribute to multiple engagements by:
co-designing, conducting, and synthesizing stakeholder interviews
conducting and synthesizing background (landscape) and historical research
designing and conducting stakeholder interviews
preparing and delivering, alongside principal consultants, presentations and documents that communicate these insights to clients and prompt strategic decision-making
contributing to collaborative strategy sessions with clients (staff leadership, staff, and Board members), potentially as a co-facilitator, depending on your presentation and facilitation skills
it’s okay if presentation and facilitation isn’t a complete strength; we have experience helping others develop these skills
contributing to public community engagement and co-design sessions, potentially as a co-facilitator, depending on your presentation and facilitation skills
it’s okay if presentation and facilitation isn’t a complete strength; we have experience helping others develop these skills
assisting principal consultants and clients in the iterative development of interpretive planning content
co-designing visuals for interpretive planning reports
it’s okay if you don’t have deep design skills; we have experience helping others develop these skills
providing project management support for engagements, such as scheduling meetings, taking and organizing notes for key sessions, and keeping engagements focused and on-schedule
additionally, there are opportunities to lead smaller engagements based on interest, qualification, and performance
This is dynamic, client-facing work, in which you’ll work closely with our entire team.
We ask for a commitment in the range of 20-30 hours per week, and we are open to a multitude of arrangements based on your preferred hours per week and schedule. That said, the ideal candidate has a degree of flexibility in their schedule, or has flexibility outside of a set of predictable hours given to a second commitment; this is important given that client meetings occur across the week and the work ebbs and flows.
You can work from anywhere with a strong, reliable internet connection. Our meetings occur within the EST/EDT workday, though all other work can be done at your preferred time of day.
For now, we have a set pipeline of cultural planning and strategy engagements that you would contribute to. That said, we’d hope to understand your interests and background and incorporate those things into the future work we seek.
We don’t call ourselves a family, but our team is in constant and deepening relationship with one another. This only works (for us, anyway) if we trust and like each other. The right person may also bring skills and experiences that expand our own, or deepen those we already have.
You don’t have to be interested in growing into a full-time role here, though there is a possibility of that if you are interested.
We forward work (alongside our clients) to change systems and increase justice. We strongly encourage applications from people of color, people from working-class backgrounds, women, and LGBTQIA+ people.
Qualifications
None of the folks on our team set out to be consultants, and all of us have varied experiences, so our “qualifications” are a list of the qualities we think are useful in our work. To be clear, you don’t have to be all of these things. No human is. But perhaps you’re some of these:
Experience in the cultural sector and/or experience in the design sector
Quick learner and synthesizer. Our work requires us to quickly learn about a client's context and be able to speak their “language” with some fluency. This should be more exciting than anxiety-producing.
Someone who asks good questions and challenges assumptions.
Organized. There are project management components to each of our engagements (everything from scheduling meetings to keeping projects on schedule and focused).
(Some degree of) personable. Practically, you could be assigned to help us interview someone (a stakeholder) and we wouldn't sweat it. Note that we don’t equate personableness with extroversion. We’re a mix of extroverts, introverts, ambiverts, and people who question whether any of it is a useful taxonomy.
A solid writer. We do a lot of writing that has to quickly and clearly communicate ideas. With support and edits, your writing should be crisp.
Details and Process
Applications are accepted on a rolling basis through June 9, 2023
Selected candidates will be invited to interview in late June.
Process will consist of: (1) an initial 30-minute Zoom screening call, (2) a 1-hour interview, (3) a paid take-home interview assignment and paid 30-minute interview assessment talk-back.
Estimated start date: July/August
Hours and Pay: 20 hours/week minimum, 30 hours/week maximum ($35/hr)
This is an independent contractor position.
To apply, please send a resume/CV and cover letter to jo...@brocade.studio