Job Reference:000468

Salary:£70,000 - £75,000 + benefits

Job Closing Date:09/11/2025

Department:Director

Location:Birmingham Hippodrome

Employment Type:Permanent

Hours Per Week:37.5 hours

Interview / Assessment Centre Date(s) w/c:17/11/2025

Job Description

Birmingham Hippodrome is incredibly proud to be one of the West Midlands’ largest cultural organisations, and one of the busiest theatres in the UK. As well as welcoming over 600,000 people to shows, the Hippodrome engages with more than 325,000 people through a vast programme of education and young people’s projects, festivals, events, produced work and artist development programmes. The Hippodrome is an independent charity, attracting support from trusts, foundations and project partners, but is not an Arts Council England NPO and doesn’t receive any regular public funding.

The Director of Creative Programmes is the critical role in ensuring that the charity can continue to deliver for the communities and creatives of Birmingham and the West Midlands. It will work with colleagues and external partners to deliver the Hippodrome’s mission by building a sustainable strategy to have an even greater impact on our region. The role will also play an important role on the Hippodrome’s team of Directors to ensure that there is a creative voice in all parts of the organisation’s decision-making.

The post focuses on three key areas: young people and education, access, artist development and site-specific/festival work. This work is central to the Hippodrome’s vision of ‘a distinctive, world-class Birmingham cultural scene with the Hippodrome at its heart’. The post-holder will be expected to work with their team to ensure these areas keep evolving to respond to changes within the cultural landscape. As well as motivating and developing Creative Programmes team, the role is responsible for building and maintaining external relationships with the creative community of the region. They will also hold relationships with building partners, including the world-class dance ecology with whom we share facilities.

Some of the core requirements for the ideal candidate include:

• Strategic thinker: able to align creative programming with organisational vision, goals, financial sustainability, growth and impact.
• Proven leadership skills: managing creative teams and production staff. Experience of line management, staff development, resource planning or capacity building.
• Ability to work effectively as part of a senior leadership team with other departments.
• Demonstrable experience of curating or programming high-quality, distinctive theatre/arts work.
• Experience of working with young people, Familiarity with arts education, learning or participation and creative learning practice.
• Significant lived experience or strong empathy/track record of working with under-represented, under-served or marginalised communities.
• Experience commissioning or producing work and programmes in collaboration with communities (co-creation), with strong stakeholder consultation and participation.
• Ability to build and maintain strategic partnerships—national, regional, local; plus partnerships with artists, cultural institutions, community organisations.

Please view the candidate pack here for full details of this role.

Applying:

At Birmingham Hippodrome we practice name-blind shortlisting for all vacancies, because it has been proven to reduce bias during the recruitment process; this is why we don’t accept CVs. Please upload a cover letter of at least 2 pages in length with your application, where you set out how your skills, experience and knowledge make you a suitable candidate for the role. Please do not include your name in the cover letter.

Recognising under-representation in our workforce of Black, Asian and ethnically diverse people, and those with disabilities, we particularly welcome applicants from those backgrounds and experiences.

If you would like to have an informal call with one of our Directors about this role, please email talent@birminghamhippodrome.com and we’d be happy to set this up for you.

We politely request no contact from agencies or media sales.

Links to further information about Birmingham Hippodrome, our strategy, and our vision: