Early Years Creative Artist- Creative Burntwood

Creative Burntwood

Creative Burntwood is an ambitious three-year outreach project to increase the number of residents engaging with creative and cultural opportunities in the town of Burntwood, run under Lichfield Garrick Theatre’s community engagement programme. The town is a close geographical neighbour of the city of Lichfield and sits within Lichfield District but has traditionally been overlooked in terms of creative investment and opportunity. Thanks to significant funding from Arts Council England’s Place Partnerships Fund, and a partnership between Lichfield Garrick Theatre, Burntwood Town Council and Lichfield District Council, we are thrilled to move forward with our plans to deliver a wide range of activity in the town over the next three years. 

Consultation to date with residents and community groups in Burntwood has demonstrated an appetite for participatory music activities, professional presented shows in community venues, CPD for primary teachers, an early year’s creative project, and the development of our existing Burntwood Youth Theatre. However, our intention has always been that the overall programme must remain flexible so that it can respond to the developing needs of residents and participants, influenced by a community steering group. Our strategic aim is to build the community/voluntary capacity that will mean the project can have a life beyond this initial three-year funded phase.

About You

We are looking for freelance artists to work specifically on the Early Years Creative Parenting strand of the project. This involves providing playful parenting workshops for parents to engage their early years children in, be it through storytelling, music, visual arts, dance or drama. 

The artist will work in conjunction with the charity Spark Burntwood to deliver against their projected outcomes, which are increasing social skills for early years children including parent to child or child to child interaction, link activities to child development, encourage tangible progress where parents can see the benefit of the activities, and grow confidence in parents to deliver activities away from sessions.

We envisage the delivery being in a workshop setting at Spark’s base in Burntwood, with regular sessions of 1.5 hours. These are provisionally scheduled for Thursday afternoons, with 20 sessions expected between November 2025-July 2026. 

You will be an imaginative, approachable, and inspirational artist with experience or expertise in working with children ages 0-5 and their parents. You will work closely with the Creative Burntwood Project Manager, as well as volunteer support staff at Spark. We are open to working with a number of artists with different specialisms to deliver the workshops, or with one all-rounder who can work regularly with the participants.

How to Apply 

Please send an up-to-date CV, and an expression of interest one-two sides of A4 (or equivalent) explaining your approach, ideas, and relevant experience, to recruitment@lichfieldgarrick.com together with a completed Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form which you can download from our website at www.lichfieldgarrick.com/get-involved/job-vacancies, by 1pm on Monday 27th October.

If there is anything we can do to provide additional assistance with your application, such as providing this information in a different format or accepting your application in a different format, then please get in touch. We value and welcome people from all backgrounds, and we're committed to building a workplace where everyone feels included. We strive for a fair hiring process that does not discriminate based on age, disability, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or personal circumstances, and shortlisting is anonymous. Even if you don’t meet every requirement listed in the job description, we still encourage you to apply—especially if you’re passionate about the role and can tell us how you can make a difference. We know that some people might not apply if they don’t tick every box, but we’re more interested in your potential and transferable skills than in finding someone who matches the job ad perfectly.

If you would like an informal chat about the role, please contact recruitment@lichfieldgarrick.com or call the Garrick Admin number 01543 412110 (this number is answered by someone who can arrange for a colleague to call you back about the role). We’re sorry that speculative in-person enquiries can’t always be accommodated.

We recognise that some applicants may use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help write their application. If you choose to use AI, then please only use it to assist you rather than relying on it to write your whole application. Applications that rely too heavily on AI may be rejected during shortlisting.