Designer and Project Manager, Forum for the Future – United Kingdom

Organization: Forum for the Future

Position Title: Designer and Project Manager – System Innovation Lab

Location: London, United Kingdom

Dates and compensation: Fixed term contract for one year. The period of notice is 1 months in writing on each side. There is a probationary period of three months.; £26841 – £30245 plus £3550 London weighting allowance

Application Deadline: August 10, 2015

Description: Your mission will be to accelerate and drive forward social and environmental impact, driven by what creativity, design and innovation can contribute to sustainability. You will join a team working together with businesses, funders and other organisations to find solutions to complex, systemic challenges, with the ambitious goal to shift entire systems onto a more sustainable path.

Responsibilities:

• Contributing to the design, delivery and management of system innovation projects and experiments.Projects at Forum are increasingly large-scale, collaborative and international. The outcome is often uncertain and thus requires agile working methods, an iterative process, and a team who can switch between big picture and fine detail, operating in both modes.
• Adding creative skills to Forum’s toolbox.As our processes become increasingly agile, the skills to rapidly test ideas become crucial to effective delivery. Prototyping allows us to bring the intangible to life and confront people with it, whether it’s through digital, products or services, visual communication or another channel.
• Supporting the design and facilitation of participative sessions and interactions. Face-to-face collaboration and co-creation is a crucial aspect of all work at Forum. Creating the conditions where everyone can contribute, where insight can be surfaced and where new ideas can be generated is part of our role as a convenor of people and organisations.
• Supporting the System Innovation Lab to learn from the experiments we run. It is through a process of experimentation and learning that the lab supports the wider organisation, encouraging strategic agility and ensuring other teams have the tools they need to work toward systemic shift. To drive this agenda we need to question and push the status quo.
• Growing and maintaining a network of collaborators.Our projects require teams as comfortable managing relationships with partners as using social media to grow an informal community, and who can spot opportunities through nurturing these relationships.

Qualifications:

• You believe the value of a great idea is in making it happen.
• You’ve had a tonne of interesting experience designing and delivering projects, products, experiments or interventions.
• You’re a design thinker, an aspiring systems thinker, and you bring your thinking to life through agile working processes and prototyping.
• You have a range of design research methods up your sleeve, from in-person interviews and focus groups, to online ethnography and remote user studies.
• You can tell a great story, whether you’re making a presentation, creating some visual communication or using digital platforms to spread ideas.
• You’re ready to turn your experience managing projects into experience managingcomplex projects, and by that we mean multi-stakeholder, multi-funder or international… Or all of the above.
• You’re not fazed by anything – including managing your time and your budget.
• You get Forum’s mission and you’re already seeing several ways your skills can help us get there.
• You might have a background in innovation, service design, user experience or sustainability, or perhaps you were part of a start-up… Or, you might be the surprise we’ve been waiting for.

How to Apply: Please send your completed application pack by email to [email protected] or by post to Sophie Kennedy, 19-23 Ironmonger Row, London EC1V 3QN. Your application should include a completed application form and an equal opportunities form. The equal opportunities form will be detached from your application and will not form part of the shortlisting or selection process.

Please note that due to the number of applications we receive we are unable to respond to all individually. Therefore if you have not heard from us by close of business on Thursday 13 August 2015 we will not be taking your application further.

Here’s an overview of the skill sets you’ll bring and develop, to drive to your mission.

You can find a full description of the role in the accompanying Job Description

Closing date: 9am, Monday 10 August 2015

Telephone interviews: Thursday 13 August 2015

Second interviews: Wednesday 19 or Friday 21 August 2015

Final interviews: Monday 31 August 2015

Application pack:

Job Description
Application form
Equal opportunities form
Staff benefits
Annual Report