Communications & Events Manager

About the Home-Grown Homes Project 

This opportunity is being supported through the Welsh Government funded Home-Grown Homes project. This multi award-winning project started in 2018 by encouraging Welsh Housing Associations (who build approximately 1 out of 3 new homes in Wales) to build with timber and working with the supply chain to help enable delivery. The project has led to many new low carbon timber-based housing developments and has inspired new Welsh Government policies across housing, the economy, forestry and timber sales from the state forest. Our work has been commended internationally and some of our best practice guidance has been recommended for use to the design community by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). The Home-Grown Homes project began by creating a coalition of the willing. The purpose of this next phase of the project is in a large part to support Welsh Government meet its new policy objectives and aspirations across forestry, construction and land-use to help drive forward the low carbon, circular and foundational economy. 

Key Responsibilities 

You will be responsible for implementing the communications and stakeholder engagement plan of the Home-Grown Homes Project (HGHP2) by bringing its ideas to life in creative and engaging ways. The plan is available on demand. 

Content management 

Your tasks include coordinating, editing and managing our social media accounts, newsletters, publications and website as well as curating our image and video library. In short, you will be in charge of our online and offline content. 

Events management 

You will help organise and promote our conferences, workshops and training events. You will work with team members and external delivery partners to ensure the smooth running and delivery of a range of private and public facing activities. 

Stakeholder management 

You will be responsible for stakeholder management. In this role you will coordinate stakeholder engagement across the team and communicate with our networks and members. 

Monitoring and evaluation 

You will monitor and evaluate our communications activities across all channels. 

You will work with the communication and marketing manager and will be supported by the Chief Executive and our project team which includes experts in forestry, housing, manufacturing, wood science, timber construction, and systems change. 

Key abilities / experience 

We are looking for someone with the ability to work closely with a small team in a flexible and supportive way across job boundaries and who is comfortable working from home. You must be able to engage with all relevant individuals and organisations in the supply chain from forest to construction sector in in a way that promotes trust and supports the mission and purpose of Woodknowledge Wales as a for-public-good organisation. 

You must be able to develop an understanding of the complex challenges to landscapes and communities posed by climate change and to communicate with empathy and clarity in discussions around these. 

Person Specification 

• Relevant experience in communication, marketing, event management 
• Project management and decision-making skills. Ability to prioritise and manage multiple project tasks and deadlines. 
• Stakeholder engagement and management skills. Evidence of effective partnership working. 
• Journalistic skills and evidence of engaging content delivery across multiple formats. Ability to write in an engaging style 
• Thorough working knowledge of Microsoft Office, online conferencing tools (e.g. Zoom, Teams) 
• Working knowledge in the use of content and event management software (e.g. Mailchimp, Hootsuite, Eventbrite, WordPress) 
• An organised self-starter, able to manage own workload and work independently to tight time-scales 
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills – specifically the ability to work closely with network organisations 
• Willingness to work in a flexible way and respond to changing circumstances 

Desirable criteria 

• Design skills and the ability to use relevant design software (e.g. Adobe, Photoshop, etc.) 
• Welsh language skills 
• Public speaking skills to deliver presentations and facilitate public meetings. 
• Full, clean driving license and access to a car for travel throughout those parts of Wales where there is limited access to public transport 

About Woodknowledge Wales 

Woodknowledge Wales is an independent mission driven membership alliance. We are a charitable Community Benefits Society, which is a form of cooperative that exists for the benefit of society. We are governed by a voluntary board. We aim to create and share knowledge to accelerate change. We believe that timber demand and supply can be better aligned and more purposefully driven to deliver greater climate change mitigation and biodiversity enhancement across land use and construction. We are transparent and collaborative in our approach. We are a change organisation driven by impact rather than income. 

We are a small interdisciplinary team of driven individuals motivated to inspire, catalyse and accelerate the transformation to a regenerative zero carbon society through the growing of trees and the use of wood. We believe that the most effective way to do this is to build trust in the change agenda by supporting organisations involved in both timber use and supply. We seek to capture and share the knowledge gained by holding engaging events, by creating informative case studies, by developing new guidance and through inspiring communication. We support policy makers to create enabling policies and then help overcome barriers to implementation.