Birmingham Queer Archive – Lead Interviewer

Job Type: Freelance contract, beginning April 2026

Background: Birmingham LGBT delivers a range of services to the LGBTQ+ community in Birmingham and the West Midlands, including trans services, wellbeing support, counselling, sexual health promotion, youth work, older people’s support, arts and domestic violence (IDVA) services. The Birmingham Queer Archive will tell the story of Birmingham’s LGBTQ+ heritage from the 1960s to the present day, paying particular emphasis to the previously overlooked accounts of women, Global Majority, trans and non-binary voices.

Job Description: We are looking for someone experienced in supporting LGBTQ+ people from a diverse range of backgrounds to share their stories and to lead a team of two assistant interviewers.

Responsibilities:

• Support and guide initial project planning and approaches, working closely with the Project Producer and Project Curator.
• Record oral history interviews with a range of LGBTQ+ people from diverse backgrounds, ensuring a comfortable and supportive environment for participants.
• Summarise and, where appropriate, note key metadata, and transcribe excerpts of recordings ready for cataloguing, tagging and archiving.
• Guide conversations to ensure interviews contain engaging and relevant content suitable for use in the project.
• Manage documentation and permissions to ensure compliant recordings.
• Provide emotional support to participants, ensuring they are aware of available resources if the interview process is triggering.

Communication & Management:

• Communicate with the Project Producer to fulfil the administrative needs of the project, including when arranging interview times and locations.
• Communicate with the Project Producer to fulfil monitoring, evaluation and reporting requirements, including data collection and regular progress updates.
• Manage the work activity of two assistant interviewers, setting tasks, reviewing progress to ensure quality and relevancy of content, supporting and advising where necessary.
• Provide development opportunities to the assistant interviewers where appropriate.
• Track relevant project expenses as agreed with Project Producer.
• Attend monthly project meetings and adhere to reporting and check-in requirements.

Training & Compliance:

• Attend training sessions covering: recording oral history, archive management and data-protection legislation, and mental-health first-aider training.
• Work to agreed Oral History Society guidelines.
• Maintain high standards of data protection and digital security.
• Adhere to relevant policies (Safeguarding, Health & Safety, Data Privacy and Equality, Diversity & Inclusion).
• Record and process approximately 30 short (30-minute) oral history interviews with support from two assistant interviewers.

Person Specification:

• Experience of recording interviews to be shared publicly, e.g. oral histories, podcasts and radio interviews.
• Able to make people from a range of different backgrounds feel comfortable and confident being recorded and sharing their own experiences.
• Able to record interviews to a high standard, taking the lead on both recording processes and content.
• Be based in Birmingham or able to travel regularly to Birmingham to record the majority of interviews in the Birmingham area.
• Be empathetic and sensitive to issues around gender, sexuality, mental health and discrimination.
• Be patient, attentive to details, and caring towards participants.
• Experience of line management, or similar experience supporting people to work towards a shared outcome.

How To Apply: Send an up‑to‑date CV, a covering letter of no longer than two sides of A4 or a video/voice note of no longer than 5 minutes and the completed Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form. Applications must be received by 10am on Monday 6 April. We expect to interview short‑listed candidates between 13 and 17 April 2026.