Could you make a difference for members of the LGBT+ community in Edinburgh and beyond?

The Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive has grown out of Scotland’s first LGBT+ bookshops, Lavender Menace (1982-87) and West & Wilde (1987-97). They sold what we now call queer books – by, about or for LGBT+ people – at a time mainstream bookshops would not stock them. The bookshops also provided openly queer meeting places, where LGBT+ people were able to connect and felt affirmed and welcomed.

Bob Orr and Sigrid Nielsen, the owners of the original Lavender Menace Bookshop, in 2019 founded the Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive to keep this valuable LGBT+ book heritage alive and share it with the community. Through its amazing collection of books, the archive tells the story of queer people’s resistance, and the rise of what is now known as ‘queer pride’. These books told the stories of queer lives; they were written honestly and positively for the first time, and they changed lives.

This post represents a unique opportunity to work with Edinburgh’s Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive to develop an Oral History Project (OHP). The OHP will explore the impact and legacy of the Lavender Menace and West & Wilde Bookshops (1982-97), and more generally community experiences of reading LGBT+ books and magazines, and ways reading – now and in the past – has impacted on their identity. Stories and interpretation will be shared online as well as through a programme of events and a temporary exhibition.

The Oral History Project’s key activities are:

• Recruiting, supporting, training and coordinating volunteers to become involved in the OHP.
• Identifying OHP interview participants and devise ways to capture the individual and collective voices and stories of LGBT+ community members.
• Working with partners and stakeholders in the development and delivery of the project.
• Acting as the main point of contact for the volunteers and interviewees, to arrange and set up interviews, liaise with volunteers and interviewees.
• Ensuring policies, systems and processes are in place to collect, store and use all audio and visual material collected.
• Promoting the OHP and its programme of events, creating materials for use on social media, website and in the temporary exhibition, and ensuring the Archive’s profile is raised through these activities.

These activities build on the existing programme of events and projects under the responsibility of the Community Project Coordinator with the team of volunteers. The post holder will thus be able to tap into their experience, contacts and knowledge in taking this work forward.

Employee benefits package

• 35 days of leave (pro-rata including public holidays)
• Enhanced pension scheme
• Flexible working options
• Training and development opportunities

NYOS nurtures and celebrates outstanding classical youth music-making, with a vision of all Scotland’s communities sharing in its social, personal, and cultural benefits. Through our three programme strands - NYOS Foundations, NYOS Orchestras and NYOS Futures – we offer accessible, co-created projects, world-class orchestral training, and performances, and unique career development opportunities. Our work is delivered by internationally renowned artists and exceptional tutors. Creativity, ambition, belonging, and joy are fundamental to all we do.

The Administration Officer role is designed to enable NYOS to operate efficiently. The post-holder will report directly to the Head of Finance and Administration and will work closely with them to provide administrative support across NYOS departments as well as providing admin support to the Chief Executive.

Job Challenge

To develop and implement key new systems while maintaining and supporting ongoing operations.

A full Job Description is available for download below.

Hours: Full time and permanent. 35 hours a week over core working hours of 10am - 3pm, Monday to Friday, with a one-hour lunch break. The office is open 8am – 6pm daily and our hybrid working policy requires all full-time employees to work at least two days a week in the Edinburgh office.

Benefits:10% employer pension contribution; employee assistance programme and counselling service; enhanced maternity/paternity/adoption pay; enhanced sick pay; 31 days’ paid holiday/year plus four paid winter public holidays; 2-weeks fully remote working/year; three paid carer days/year; death in service benefit; cycle to work and travel season ticket schemes.

To support the Team’s work-life balance, we work a nine-day fortnight where the charity is closed every second Friday.

About the role and why we need you

By joining our friendly, committed charity you’ll be making an impact every day. Working within the Events and Community Team, you will have the opportunity to grow this income stream and work across the charity to provide sector-leading supporter experience. You will work closely with the Events and Community Manger to lead the charity’s outdoor and challenge event portfolio, attend challenge events and community fundraising activities to steward supporters, deliver talks and give thanks. The role also gives you the chance to show why discovery research is vital to starting new cancer cures, and as a highly collaborative charity, your colleagues will be eager to share their expertise with you.

The charity’s values are Curious, United, Real, Entrepreneurial and Spirited, which you can readily demonstrate day to day. You will be an advocate for our vision and act as a role model for the charity when in touch with event and challenge participants.

Who are we?

At Worldwide Cancer Research, we start new cures. Cancer is still one of the leading causes of death worldwide, but cutting-edge science can give us hope. Discovery research seeks to uncover new knowledge that could change the way we think about cancer. It reveals new ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer that can save lives.

We actively seek unconventional and imaginative ideas from scientists at all stages of their career, across the globe. In some cases, we are the only organisation that will fund a scientist’s idea. We take an unbiased approach to research funding by focusing on supporting only the best ideas for new cures. By having a diverse research portfolio, we increase our chances of finding breakthroughs.

Our vision is of a day when no life is cut short by cancer, and we believe we can achieve this by starting the life-saving advances of the future by sowing the seeds of discoveries. Anyone that helps bring forward breakthroughs – including our staff, our supporters, and the researchers we fund – is a Curestarter.

As a charity, we are committed to opportunity without barriers, and we are striving to seek, value and learn from different perspectives and experiences. We want Worldwide Cancer Research to be an inclusive organisation – where everyone can be themselves and feel valued – as diverse as the scientific community we fund and the families whose lives we impact.

We are committed to ensuring that we provide equal opportunities to every applicant regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation. We aim to ensure that our recruitment process is unbiased and that everyone is treated equitably. In support of this, we have pledged to ‘Show the Salary’ for our roles and we are registered as a Disability Confident Committed Employer - because our team members are at the heart of everything we do to start new cancer cures around the world.

To help start new cancer cures and save lives, we are looking for an Events and Community Fundraising Officer to join the busy Events and Community Team at Worldwide Cancer Research, to help the charity run its multi-million-pound funding programme for discovery cancer research.