Job Description

“Living successfully in a world of systems requires more of us than our ability to calculate. It requires our full humanity — our rationality, our ability to sort out truth from falsehood, our intuition, our compassion, our vision, and our morality.”

Donella Meadows, Dancing with Systems

About us

Careful Trouble is the umbrella name for Careful Industries and Promising Trouble, two social enterprises working together to make sure more people have the chance to shape, inform and create new technologies. Careful Industries is an independent research studio; we work with clients to understand and anticipate the social impacts of technologies and create equitable policies and governance solutions. Through Promising Trouble, we work in partnership to run pilots and programmes that put community power at the heart of technology and innovation. 

We are a remote first team, and all team members work across both organisations. Our staff come together for team development events at least twice a year. Attendance at these meetings may involve travel within the UK. 

Our Values 

• Care is the organising principle for everything we do: care for and about people and the planet, combined with a rigorous and diligent approach to investigating uncertainty. 

• We are constantly learning, always curious, and strive to be inclusive and accepting.

• We champion careful innovation and feminism for the 99%.

• We are wayfinders not competitors.

• We ask good questions, seek useful answers, and listen closely

• We are impatient for change, but careful in our actions 

• We use our power to state the unsaid and make space for others

• We look after each other so we can make careful trouble together.

About your work and the role

Careful Trouble is currently seven people and we collaborate with a small network of freelancers and associates. We are currently advertising for this role and another, which will grow the team to nine. 

This is a new role, helping us grow from being research-oriented into co-creating and delivering pilots and programmes that deliver real value for people and communities. Creating this role is an important step for Careful Trouble: it is an opportunity to embed new practices and ways of working, and challenge and improve our existing approaches. 

The common thread through all of our work is a commitment to removing and reducing imbalances in justice and power and involving more people in the creation and shaping of new futures and technologies. We want to strengthen our practice and ensure we are useful members of any community we engage with: all of our work must be generous, generative and productive, based on good relationships. 

The Head of Community Development and Inclusion will initially focus on our projects with Impact on Urban Health and Community Tech, while also working to build and improve our networks and relationships with other organisations working at the intersection of technology, social justice and the new economy. As our safeguarding lead, you will also play a part in improving practice across the organisation, offering mentorship and advice to colleagues to help ensure our approaches to co-creation and research are equitable, accessible and accountable. 

2023 will be our second full year of operation: we are still growing and developing our processes and ways of working. We are collaborative and purpose oriented. This is what we got up to in 2022. 

Immediate priorities

Promising Trouble has been working with Impact on Urban Health on issues around digital exclusion, data poverty and affordable internet connectivity for over a year. We are now moving into a major new programme of research, policy and community-driven activity. Part of the programme is to work with social-housing residents, communities and local organisations in Lambeth and Southwark to explore what a pilot project around connectivity and health might look like. We hope to support a pilot that addresses residents’ needs and interests and provides useful information about how internet connectivity impacts health and wellbeing.

We also have a major programme of work with Power to Change on Community Tech. Community Tech is technology made for, with and by communities, that generates social, cultural and economic value that is retained by that community. We are currently developing a Community of Practice which will be a space for people working on community tech to come together, learn and share. We want to ensure our work on the programme, and the Community Tech space more broadly, are as welcoming, inclusive and diverse as possible, but we recognise there is work to be done to achieve and maintain this. 

Through Careful Industries, the topics our research and foresight activity covers is varied: in the last twelve months we have delivered work for clients on topics as diverse as Safety Tech governance, the social impacts of using Web3 in humanitarian contexts, the importance of diverse and representative data in genomic medicine, and the future of the creative industries. A commitment to equity, justice and challenge to the status quo runs through this work, and the Head of Community Development and Inclusion will play a role in ensuring our research practices are equitable, generative, and reflect our values, and provide challenge and input as needed.

Person specification

People are at the heart of everything we do. Our Head of Community Development and Inclusion will play a critical role in engaging with people, communities and organisations, building and maintaining open and productive relationships, and leading the team on embedding diversity, equality and inclusion in all our work. 

The Head of Community Development and Inclusion will spend significant time working ‘on the ground’ in Lambeth and Southwark for the Impact on Urban Health programme, particularly in the early phases of the project. This is likely to be several days a week; while we are currently remote-first, we are actively considering options for taking a workspace in Lambeth or Southwark, as needed. There may be scope to bring in additional support or freelance capacity later in the project.

Responsibilities

Community Engagement and Partnership

• Lead on building and maintaining equitable, open and trusting relationships with community partners 

• Facilitate genuine and equitable co-creation of research, projects and other activities with community partners

• Develop Careful Trouble’s relationships with fellow-traveller organisations and practitioners, sharing learning and best practices where appropriate, and creating useful and supportive partnerships 

• Champion accountability, excellent listening and giving and receiving good feedback in all of our relationships

• Develop Careful Industries’ and Promising Trouble’s approach to and knowledge of effective and equitable partnership and community work 

• Apply good practice in community engagement and participation, and keep up to date with emerging practice and innovation in this space

• Work to address barriers to participation in our work, so that anyone who wants to get involved is able to do so 

• Ensure we provide a positive experience for anyone who engages with our work 

• Act as our safeguarding lead and ensure appropriate implementation and monitor the appropriateness and effectiveness of our safeguarding policy. 

• Represent Careful Trouble externally at events and conferences, both as a presenter and as a listener and learner 

Delivery

• Develop a plan for delivering community work on the IoUH and Community Tech programmes, working with the Research Project Manager, Head of Operations and Head of Research on operation and budgets 

• Develop our accessibility, diversity, equality and inclusion best practice across our projects and within our organisation

• Work with research colleagues to develop our process around generating insight with communities 

• Work with colleagues in Operations to establish smooth set-up and management processes for workshops and other collaborative activities, including methods for managing invitations, payments, understanding accessibility needs of participants, and obtaining consent for participation 

• Work with colleagues in Operations to ensure our contact lists are maintained, secure and efficient ways of contact management, that are compliant with GDPR and also enable us to build a network of contacts

• Ensure our community engagement processes comply with our safeguarding, GDPR and research ethics policies, and that appropriate consent is obtained

Management

• Potentially line manage other staff and/ or freelancers 

• Manage budgets 

Skills and Experience

Essential

Demonstrable experience and knowledge of effective approaches to community engagement, participation, co-production 

• Demonstrable experience and knowledge of effective approaches to improving diversity, equality and inclusion practice and outcomes 

• Experience of effectively working with a wide range of partners and stakeholders, for example community groups, local authorities, funders, communities of practice, businesses

• Experience of leading the development and improvement of engagement, participation or inclusion practices, ideally within a small organisation 

• Enthusiasm, confidence and a proactive approach to building new relationships

• Comfortable working in an emerging and sometimes uncertain environment 

• Ability and willingness to travel regularly to work face-to-face with community partners in Lambeth and Southwark. This is likely to be several days per week.

Desirable

• Interest in technology and its impacts on society and health 

• Experience or knowledge of participatory research methods 

• Knowledge of the boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark, and connections with local voluntary and community groups

Reporting lines

The Head of Community Development and Inclusion will report into the Executive Director. We operate a matrix management approach and our Head of Operations leads on pastoral care for all staff members. As Head of Community Development and Inclusion you may be responsible for supervising / managing other staff or freelancers. 

Package

Salary between £50,000 and £55,000 depending on experience

Full Time (we work a 4-day week*, 32 hours as standard - salary is 100%, not pro rata)

Fixed-Term Contract 12 Months with potential to extend, dependent on funding

We are a remote-first, flexible working company but this job will involve being regularly present in Lambeth and Southwark (South London)

5 weeks holiday plus Bank Holidays and 4 days climate leave

Remote Working Allowance £1,500 (to include Laptop).

*We are moving to a flexible 4-day working week, a full time contract is 32 hours. Core hours are 10am-4pm and must include Mondays and Tuesdays.