EVENTS PRODUCER

OCTOBER 2021

EVENTS PRODUCER

Directorate: Research & Impact

Team: Public Events

Grade: C

Reports to: Joint Heads of Events

IN A NUTSHELL

The purpose of this role is in bringing important social, cultural, political, and

economic issues to a global audience, attracting world-class speakers and

facilitating debate on pressing challenges facing society. The postholder takes

responsibility for end-to-end production of a range of events, as well as for

researching and developing new content and formats across the programme.

CONTEXT

• The public events programme is critical to delivering on

the organisation’s mission and purpose

of uniting people and ideas to resolve the challenges of our time.

• This is an established role in the Public Events team, playing a key role in the

development and running of the programme alongside one other Producer

and within a small programming team.

• There are regular and strict deadlines to be met, with the team planning,

producing, and promoting at least one event per week. The events take

place at RSA House in central London and a significant proportion of events

are produced in a fully digital format.

• The programme consists of approximately 80 events a year which feature

on our popular YouTube channel (over 730,000 subscribers worldwide).

SCOPE

• Financial: no financial responsibility

• Staff: no direct or indirect reports

• Responsible for building and maintaining good relationships with internal and

external contacts, including colleagues at all levels of seniority across the

organisation, networks of speakers and potential speakers, publicists,

publishing houses, among others.

• Key internal stakeholders: Director of Content & Engagement and Chief

Research & Impact Officer, as well as programme leads, and senior

managers across Research & Impact, Fellowship Engagement and

Communications & Marketing

• Key external stakeholders: Editorial and communications professionals from

academic and popular publishing presses and partner organisations

MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES PROGRAMMING AND PRODUCTION

1. Programme compelling and innovative events for the RSA public

programme, combining the very best of quality and breadth in

contemporary public discourse with a special focus on themes of direct

relevance to RSA research across the Future of Work, Regenerative Futures,

Learning Society, and Inclusive Education

2. Identify, invite and brief suitable speakers and event moderators - from

leading public intellectuals, international thought-leaders and policymakers to

up-and-coming early-stage career academics and innovators; constantly

horizon-scan for new voices and agenda-setting content

3. Independent end-to-end event production, from idea generation to each

aspect of event delivery, including writing original event copy, creating

comprehensive agendas and briefing notes with context and clear event

aims, scripting chair’s introductory remarks and discussion points, hosting

speakers on-site at the event and in webinar ‘green rooms’/ digital recording

sessions and ensuring appropriate instruction to each member of the

support team

4. Create strong event plans to ensure effective delivery of all event logistics

including clear instruction to the Public Events Programme Coordinator,

RSA Hospitality and AV teams

5. Independently project manage multiple events as part of series (e.g. at

Festivals such as Wilderness and Seed), including content development,

social media and communications planning, sponsor/partner liaison and

stakeholder management

6. Work closely with colleagues across the Research & Impact team to adapt

specialist research content into accessible and creative formats for the public

platform that will attract and engage a wide general audience in person, and

globally online

7. Liaise with the Lead Content & Social Media Manager and Events

Coordinator on effective marketing, social media and communications

strategies, ensuring maximum publicity pre and post event and quality

audience attendance, to include a range of relevant key stakeholders; and

ensuring wide dissemination of programme content across a range of online

platforms

OTHER PROJECTS

1. Contribute to the development of RSA Shorts series by identifying

thematically aligned and potentially viral content from RSA events and edit

audio files for animation and pitch to the Shorts Working Group for

inclusion in the RSA Events animation series

2. Participate as events lead member of multi-disciplinary working groups,

helping to shape and produce events series to deliver on

project/programme impact and engagement goals

3. Assistance as and when required to the Joint Heads of Events, in particular

with research on new formats, new partnerships and sponsorship

opportunities

COMPETENCIES

RSA CORE COMPETENCIES LEVEL

Equitable and inclusive practice Core

Our organisational context Senior Practitioner

Commercial and business skills Core

Critical thinking and problem solving Senior Practitioner

Risk management Core

Planning and prioritisation Senior Practitioner

Communication and engagement Senior Practitioner

Data & information systems Core

Leadership Core

Project and programmatic working Senior Practitioner

JOB FAMILY: CONTENT AND ENGAGEMENT LEVEL

Media- policy awareness Core

Communication of research & impact work Senior Practitioner

Content Production Senior Practitioner

Events – editorial Senior Practitioner

Events – audience-building & engagement Senior Practitioner

Fellowship and network building / management Core

Core - Role requires the basics. The postholder understands the competency

area and has some experience actively delivering at a junior level.

Senior practitioner - Role will likely be ‘mid-level’ in terms of experience, skill and

knowledge. The postholder has a track record of direct delivery.

Expert - Recognised by the organisation as a Subject Matter Expert (SME). The

postholder delivers to the highest levels and standards and supports others to

do the same. Helps shape the RSA’s requirements and approach in this area.

PERSON SPECIFICATION Essential

qualifications

• Educated to degree level in social science/arts/humanities

subject(s) or equivalent experience

Essential

knowledge

• Demonstrable awareness and understanding of the latest

thinking on a broad range of topics from education and

economics to policy and public affairs, and an interest in

current affairs and ideas

• Good knowledge of the

publishing/academic/media/current affairs and ideas

landscape, and demonstrable ability to build strong

relationships with the relevant key influencers in these

fields

Essential

experience

• Significant relevant experience of event planning and

production gained preferably within a policy think tank,

educational or cultural organisation

• Experience of social media communications planning and

delivery

• Experience writing accurate and compelling copy for a

range of audiences and platforms

Essential skills

and abilities

• Excellent proven writing, research and editorial skills, with

an ability to adapt complex content into accessible

formats; and a creative approach to programming for the

public

• A keen eye for speaker talent, fresh and diverse voices,

and new thinking in public and policy debate aligned to

the RSA’s research & impact portfolio

• Excellent organisational skills and proven ability to co-

ordinate complex logistics, multi-task and prioritise

workload across concurrent projects; to work

independently and accurately, under pressure and at

pace

• Excellent IT skills, including the full Microsoft Office Suite

Essential

behaviours or

qualities

• Aligned with the RSA’s core values

• Cooperative team member and assertive decision-maker,

able to use initiative to trouble-shoot and find solutions

in a fast-moving live events environment

• Confident, warm and tactful communicator in writing

and in person, able to deal effectively with RSA Fellows,

VIP speakers, sponsors, partners, the public, and all levels

of staff

• Keen interest in ideas, current affairs and the trends and

forces shaping the critical public debates and challenges

of our times

Desirable

• Web-editing and database skills (training on the RSA’s

CMS and Salesforce CRM system will be provided)

• Experience of design software e.g. Photoshop

• Audio editing / podcast production skills

Additional

requirements

• It is expected that the job holder will work at evening

and occasional weekend events. Additional hours will be

compensated with time off in lieu (TOIL)

This job description is intended to be forward thinking and indicative rather than

final and exhaustive. The listed responsibilities and key duties and tasks may

develop and evolve over time. The RSA endeavours to keep substantial changes

to a minimum and to promptly update this job description to take account of

such developments.