Senior Producer in Manchester

The Producing Department delivers work across all our programmes at Factory International – both the year-round programme at Aviva Studios and Manchester International Festival that takes place every two years at various venues in Greater Manchester. Our team of Producers play a central role in the team and the organization as the driving force behind delivering our curated and commissioned work. As a Senior Producer, you would line produce a number of significant and complex commissions from their initial development through to their realisation and presentation to the public. You could be delivering a flagship project in and around the building, in the digital realm, across the city or internationally, and working across a range of artforms.

On larger-scale, complex projects, you will line produce, working in partnership with an Executive Producer. On medium and small-scale projects, you will lead produce working more independently, or provide oversight to emerging or freelance producers. This role will also line manage administrative members of the Producing team and support the department’s Senior Leadership to develop the processes and systems needed to deliver new commissions and touring projects to their highest standard. The Senior Producer may also take responsibility for driving forwards areas of strategic work on behalf of the department.

PRODUCING RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead producing a number of assigned projects of complexity and scale, on which you will be:
• Working with the Artistic and Creative Director to develop and nurture creative relationships with key artists, partners and other organisations to build solid working practices.
• Working closely with artists/creative teams from diverse backgrounds to develop projects from end to end. Recruiting artistic collaborators, undertaking R&D of ideas and drawing up schedules, managing logistics in order to deliver projects to the highest possible standards.
• Leading on establishing working models for partner relationships and contracting, including the development of terms for co-production, co-commissioning and ‘in association’ partnerships.
• Managing and holding accountability for project budgets using our budget systems and templates. This will include the timely and accurate coding and authorising of purchase requests and invoices, budget forecasting, running and reconciliation as well as regular updating of budget projections and cashflows, together with the provision of other financial information as required.
• Negotiating artist and project team fees and contracts within our contracting system and templates, including commission contracts and underlying rights agreements.
• Working closely with external contractors and internal colleagues across Technical, Artist Liaison, Audiences, Digital and Finance to provide them with requisite detailed project information so that they can blend their work into each project.
• Work closely with the Audiences, Visitor Experience, Ticketing and Scheduling Teams to coordinate the ticketing set up, announcement, communications strategies and sales targets for projects.
• Working closely with the International team to establish and manage Co-commission and Co-Production relationships, providing touring information and feeding into the contractual process.
• Working with Production Administrators to ensure that information is shared on event management systems and ensuring that information is continuously kept up to date on these systems.

DEPARTMENTAL RESPONSIBILITIES

• Supporting the development and evolution of our organisational systems, tools and processes required for the effective and high-quality delivery of our curated and commissioned programme.
• Act as lead contact for Producing and Programming with other key teams, to improve collaboration, communication and streamline processes between departments.
• Drive forwards areas of strategic work on behalf of the department.
• Line managing administrators within the Producing team, supporting their growth and development.

ESSENTIAL

• Proven experience of leading the delivery of complex productions or projects, managing large teams to deadlines and within defined budgets.
• Excitement and enthusiasm in supporting artists to develop their work from the early stages of an idea through to delivery of the production.
• A knowledge of delivering projects across a wide range of art forms.
• Excellent people and team management skills and experience of working with artists and creatives teams.
• Ability to and experience of managing multiple projects and priorities in a busy environment.
• Excellent budget management experience and financial literacy and demonstrable experience of improving and streamlining systems and processes in this area.
• Strong negotiation skills and experience of negotiating and drafting contracts from scratch.
• Ability to engage with and use IT systems appropriate to the organisation.
• The ability to both work on own initiative and to lead a project team.
• Commitment to championing representation and inclusion at every level of the organisation with a proven ability to work with people from a wide range of backgrounds.
• Willing to take relevant statutory checks eg DBS (Factory International can support with processing and payment).

DESIRABLE

• Experience of working in a wide range of venues/sites and with diverse communities or artists.
• Experience of successfully managing complex partnerships and building co-production relationships.
• Understanding and experience of negotiating underlying rights and license agreement, IP rights and broadcast.
• Experience of line managing staff and freelance teams.
• Experience of developing processes and systems to support delivery.
• Enthusiasm for training, mentoring and support of emerging talent.