This is an excellent opportunity for you to join Scottish Book Trust as an Early Years Trainer (TCP Project).

Scottish Book Trust is a national charity that believes books, reading and writing have the power to change lives. A love of reading inspires creativity, improves employment opportunities, mental health and wellbeing and is one of the most effective ways to help break the poverty cycle. We work towards a Scotland where everyone has an equal opportunity to thrive through literacy.

What we offer

• Full-time role working flexibly around school term times

• Competitive salary

• Flexible hybrid working between home and our Edinburgh City Centre Office, with great access by train, bus, and tram

• Generous holiday entitlement

• Company Sick Pay

• Pension with 5% employer contributions

• Death in service benefit

• Free access to employee assistance programme

The Early Years (EY) team delivers Bookbug, an evidence-informed programme which aims to promote parent-child bonding and attachment, support children’s language and communication skills, and help their social, emotional and cognitive development through reading, singing and rhyming. Key elements include universal book gifting at four stages, free story, song and rhyme Bookbug Sessions, Bookbug for the Home and community engagement, the Bookbug app, and professional learning opportunities and learning resources for people working with children in their early years.

The Early Years Trainer post will deliver a set program of Early Years training and ongoing support activities for Bookbug practitioners from a broad range of sectors and partner agencies. These include libraries, early education, the NHS and third sector organisations. The training is designed to support professionals to engage families with the benefits of sharing stories, songs and rhymes to promote speech, language and literacy in early years children.

The post holder will also work on discrete projects which support professionals and volunteers with ongoing Bookbug training and development. They will work closely with the Community Engagement Team on specific project work linked to the delivery of the Tackling Child Poverty (TCP) Project.

Other information

The role delivers training during school term time. Due to the variation in school term dates across Local Authorities the advertised dates can be flexible. Statutory holiday will be taken during the school holidays.

Evening and weekend work will be required. For training delivery in more rural and remote locations, overnight stays will be required. Overnight stays will be agreed in advance and will depend on the successful applicant’s home location.

Due to the travel requirement and geographical nature of Scotland’s more remote areas, the applicant must have a full, clean UK driving licence and access to a vehicle insured for business use.

Please note that the training Scottish Book Trust delivers is for adults who work with children and families and does not involve direct work with children.

Appointment will be conditional on securing a Level 1 from Disclosure Scotland.

JOB PURPOSE

As Scotland’s leading conservation charity, the National Trust for Scotland cares for, shares and speaks up for Scotland’s heritage. Since 1931, we’re pioneered public access to and shared ownership of some of the most magnificent buildings, collections and landscapes in Scotland. We care for ancient houses, battlefields, castles, mills, gardens, coastlines, islands and mountain ranges, as well as the plants, animals and birds that live there.

To share these special places, we hold approximately 50,000 image assets to promote and explain the purpose of the Trust. We are conscious that we do not have a robust digital asset management system to store and manage access rights to these images. These include images of:

• People
• Places – castles, gardens and landscapes
• Conservation in action
• Wildlife and nature

Note: there is an existing database (Portfolio) which holds imagery of collections items (as undertaken in a previous digitisation project).

Currently, these assets are saved across a range of locations: SharePoint, locally on people’s own machines, Flickr, on external hard drives. There are significant risks to the Trust having no coherent storage system:

• Misuse of imagery (contravening IP/copyright information) because we have no way of securely tagging and storing contracts/permissions forms alongside imagery
• Loss of assets (many are currently stored on external hard drives)
• Difficulty of sharing imagery both internally and externally
• Storage costs from duplication of images across personal machines

This immediately affects Content/Marketing, Communications and Fundraising within Audiences & Support. We currently do not have the resource or expertise within the Directorate to initiate this project so are looking for an external expert to develop a plan for how to transition to a DAMs.

The purpose of this role is to assess our current position, auditing our assets and putting in place a robust plan for an intuitive, well-governed asset management system in line with the work already done by the Collections team. We would like to use Portolio, a system already in place in other areas across the Trust, but would like the successful applicant to assess the efficacy of Portfolio, and report on its benefits/issues/whether we can optimise it to work for us, or whether an alternative package should be considered so we can make an informed decision. This will ensure a consist approach to asset management is taken across the Trust.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES

• Audit assets (video, imagery, illustrations) within the Directorate to gauge the scale of the requirements and clarify work required on copyright records.
• Assess the functionality of Portfolio for imagery, including a report on whether any development work is required to ensure it is suitable for the needs of the directorate.
• Build upon the work already done by the Collections Team to develop clear cataloguing standards for the DAMs to improve access and rights management and to ensure that a consistent approach is taken to asset management across the organisation
• Develop a plan for how to transition live imagery to Portfolio, and how to manage the transition of the image backlog.
• Design a plan for the implementation of workflows for good digital asset management including a review and disposal criteria policy and ongoing resource requirements.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS, EXPERIENCE & KNOWLEDGE

Qualifications

Essential

• Strong track record in DAMs management and/or commercial digital image library management

Desirable

• Educated to a degree level in a relevant heritage or information technology subject

Experience

Essential

• Technically knowledgeable, technically experienced person
• Proven experience with Portfolio and other DAMs systems
• Thorough understanding of the cataloguing and meta data protocols for the retrieval and exploitation of digital assets
• Experience of planning and delivering a DAMs audit/approach project
• Ability to work independently
• Experienced and independent self-starter, with the knowledge and confidence to review existing systems
• Excellent knowledge of copyright and other legal compliance issues
• Experience of develop digital management workflows

Desirable

• Experience in a charity, heritage or cultural organisation.

The National Trust for Scotland is looking for an experienced Senior Conservator to lead conservation activity across our nationally important collections and historic interiors.

You’ll lead the planning and delivery of collections conservation at the National Trust for Scotland, managing a team of regionally based Conservators within the Collections team. You’ll also provide direct conservation support for a portfolio of Trust sites in our Highlands and Islands region including castles, visitor centres, and island properties. This role combines team leadership with hands-on oversight of preventive and remedial conservation, ensuring best practice, consistency, high standards of training and sustainability.

About You

• Qualified in conservation (or equivalent experience)
• Proven experience leading teams and managing projects
• Strong knowledge of collections conservation best practice
• Skilled communicator with experience training or mentoring others
• Comfortable working across multiple sites and travelling regularly
• Full UK driving licence
• ICON accreditation and experience commissioning conservation work are desirable.

Location & Travel

• Primary base: National Trust for Scotland, Broadstone Building, 50 South Gyle Crescent, Edinburgh, EH12 9LD

§ Regular travel to properties across the Highlands & Islands region will be required. A Driving Licence, valid for driving within the UK, and a willingness to travel is essential.

JOB PURPOSE

This role will establish, develop and support delivery of our new schools programme Timesliders across a number of properties in the North East. Timesliders is an ambitious new concept for the Trust and this role will play a key part in reviewing, refreshing and developing the programme, with the aim to roll it out at other Trust properties in the future.

Working with property and national learning teams, programme developers, and teachers/schools, this role will facilitate delivery of outreach activities, create, develop and promote accompanying events and resources, and will engage schools with the project. The postholder will ensure the evaluation and reporting programme for Timesliders is implemented and will establish relationships with local schools and their communities. This post will also work closely with Visitor Services Managers at the properties to implement planning for sustained schools programmes and activities beyond the initial phase of Timesliders.

CONTEXT

At the National Trust for Scotland, we recognise the importance that learning and engagement plays in adding value to the visitor experience at our properties. In 2021, a new Formal Learning Strategy was introduced by the Trust, which aims to roll out new, consistent, high quality schools programmes across Scotland.

One of the key elements of the new programmes will be the national roll out of Timesliders. This innovative story-based programme involves digital resources, outreach resources, on-site workshops and new ways of engaging with schools in line with the Curriculum for Excellence.

Timesliders has initially been trialled at Drum Castle and Estate and this post will be involved in continued support of the programme at Drum, whilst also developing and supporting delivery of the programme at additional properties. The stories we will tell will include topics as varied as Jacobites, habitats, climate change and medieval history. This post will be at the heart of ensuring the programme reaches a range of local schools and families, including consulting with local schools and communities. This post will also lead on the creation, development and delivery of linked family events and resources to encourage return visits.

As this project is a key delivery element of the Formal Learning Strategy, this post will also work closely with the national Learning team on evaluation, reporting and development, with a dotted line to the Head of Learning. The post holder will also become a member of the Formal Learning Network, a community of practice across the Trust for staff working with schools.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES

In this role the post holder will:

• Establish and support properties to deliver Timesliders, liaising with the Site Operational teams, Operations Managers, national Learning team, and other internal/external stakeholders
• Form, build, and maintain relationships with local schools
• Liaise with the Timesliders’ development team of creators, contractors, and suppliers to develop and deliver the programme’s products
• Coordinate logistical arrangements for the outreach activities
• Support properties to deliver and coordinate schools sessions on-site
• Maintain detailed records of participating schools and visits and input into reports by the national learning team
• Contribute to and coordinate evaluation of the programme, working with an external evaluation specialist and the national learning team
• Create and develop resources, guidelines and plans as required to ensure all schools programmes meets the needs of the schools
• Create, develop and deliver new family events and resources to encourage return visits
• Ensure all work is carried out in line with our Conservation principles and Safe Systems of Work (H&S)
• Carry-out any essential administrative tasks as required; e.g. raising purchase orders, contributing to monthly reports, arranging project meetings, etc.