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Project Delivery Manager (Maternity Cover)

Mercury Theatre in Colchester
Full-time
9th August 2026
Listed today

>>StageTEXT

Join us as a Project Delivery Manager (Maternity Cover)

1-year fixed term contract

Our Mission

To advocate for and deliver equal access to arts and
culture for deaf, deafened and hard of hearing people, through high quality captions, live subtitles and digital subtitles.

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Retrograde, Apollo Theatre, 2025 Photo credit: Malachy Luckie for Stagetext

Welcome

Message from Melanie Sharpe, CEO

Thank you for your interest in the role of Project Delivery Manager at Stagetext, at what we believe is an incredibly exciting time for the charity.

Formed in 2000, Stagetext is a deaf-led charity that supports arts and culture venues to provide textbased deaf access such as theatre captions, live and digital subtitles for live performances and online events.

Our vision is of a society where there are no barriers for deaf, deafened and hard of hearing people accessing arts, culture and entertainment.

We’re proud of what we’ve put in place over the last 25 years, but there is still lots to do. Looking ahead, our priority is to foster a deeper relationship with venues and audiences and bring more captioning to venues across the UK.

This is where you come in – a talented and passionate Project Delivery Manager with a collaborative and hands-on approach to working. You’ll play a key role in expanding access to theatre and cultural experience for thousands of deaf, deafened and hard of hearing people across England.

You’ll coordinate national funded programmes, build partnerships with theatres and cultural organisations, and ensure projects are delivered successfully and achieve lasting impact.

Whilst your experience and expertise will be important to this role, your belief in our vision and purpose and your enthusiasm for what we’re trying to achieve is equally important.

As a deaf-led charity we actively encourage applications from people with lived experience of being deaf, deafened or hard of hearing. We're also interested in hearing from people with deaf family members, or people who have worked with deaf people, whether British Sign Language (BSL) users or not.

Stagetext staff have a wide range of lived experience of deafness including people who wear hearing aids or cochlear implants, are hard of hearing or use BSL as their first language. You do not need to know BSL to apply for the role.

At Stagetext, inclusion is at the heart of everything we do. We are actively seeking applications from people who are currently underrepresented in Stagetext and in the arts and culture sector, including Black, Asian, and ethnically diverse people, disabled people, LGBTQ+ people, and those with socioeconomic disadvantage.

We recognise that people gain skills and experience through many different routes. If you are excited about this role but do not meet every requirement, we would still encourage you to apply.

We are committed to providing an accessible recruitment process and welcome requests for reasonable adjustments throughout the application and interview stages.

We do hope you’ll consider being part of Stagetext and help us go forward into the next phase of our ambitious plans to bring more captioning and access to more places more often.

Melanie Sharpe, CEO

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Live subtitles for Channel 4’s launch of its Paralympic Games coverage, 2024

About Us

Stagetext is a deaf-led national charity based at the Mercury Theatre in Colchester.

When we say we are a deaf-led organisation, we mean that most of the people involved in Stagetext - our staff, our board, our ambassadors, and founders are deaf, deafened or hard of hearing themselves and are passionate about the arts.

This is why we aren't just advocates for access; we're a part of it.

The organisation is governed by a non-executive Board of Trustees and led by the Chief Executive, supported by a senior management team.

We have a team of 9 employees and approximately 40 freelance professionals – i.e. Captioners and Speech to Text Reporters (STTRs).

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Stagetext is regularly funded by Arts Council England (ACE). In 2025/26 Stagetext made a total of 963 performances, talks, tours and films accessible.

Of these events:

• 466 theatre performances were captioned by Stagetext across 131 venues, of which 46% took place outside of London

• 438 talks and conferences were live subtitled by Stagetext

• 59 digital works were made accessible by Stagetext, comprising 3,070 minutes

We also trained 309 cultural professionals in Deaf Awareness and presented to a further 390 people.

What we do

We advocate for and promote accessible captions and subtitles to arts and culture providers and to other key stakeholders. One of the ways we do this is by offering Deaf Awareness Training to venues and Arts Professionals.

We deliver theatre captioning, live subtitling and digital subtitling services to arts and culture providers

We advise arts and culture providers on how they can make their events and content accessible

We help to grow deaf, deafened and hard of hearing audiences for arts and cultural events.

Our Services

• Captioning at theatre performances where the script can be pre-prepared and cued live by a Stagetext trained Captioner

Live subtitling via a Speech-to-Text Reporter or Palantypist for events, like talks, where the script cannot be pre-prepared

• Subtitling pre-recorded digital content or delivering training on how to create in-house digital subtitles i.e. for websites

• Training Theatre Captioners

• Deaf Awareness Training for cultural professionals i.e Box Office and Front of House staff in theatres.

Captions for Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bridge Theatre, 2025 Photo credit: Malachy Luckie

Our Ambitions

In 2023 Stagetext was one of the first arts organisations to relocate out of London to the South East as part of our ambitious plan to increase deaf access regionally. The move was part of Arts Council England’s Transfer Programme and our plan is to continue to work closely with a range of arts, culture and heritage organisations in the South East whilst still delivering nationally.

Whilst continuing our work in London and nationally, Stagetext is developing a new regional model to engage with new deaf, deafened and hard of hearing audiences across the South East, as well as reaching other audiences that can benefit from captions, including those with English as an additional language and neurodivergent people.

This new way of working will also enable us to work more closely with producing theatre companies ensuring that deaf access is considered and embedded at the heart of the artistic process.

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The Role

This is an exciting opportunity to organise and help deliver a portfolio of funded projects that will increase access to arts and culture for deaf, deafened, and hard of hearing people across England.

The role combines project delivery, stakeholder engagement, partnership development, and performance reporting.

You will work with theatres, cultural organisations, captioners, trainers, and funders to help deliver projects that create lasting change across the cultural sector.

Working closely with the Deputy CEO, Programme Managers, and external partners, you will coordinate the successful delivery of several strategic projects, ensuring they are delivered on time, within budget and in accordance with funder requirements.

The three main projects are:

Creative Foundations Fund (CFF) - to work with a network of 12 hub theatres across England to provide captioning equipment that can be shared with partner venues

Essex Cultural Development Fund - to co-ordinate the delivery of Deaf Awareness Training to 120 arts and culture professionals and volunteers across Essex while supporting the upskilling of Essexbased captioners in Stagetext+ software

Stagetext+ Captioner Training - to co-ordinate the rollout of training for existing Stagetext captioners using the organisation's new captioning software platform.

Please read the Job Description for more details.

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Who We Work With

We work with small, medium and large-scale theatres, museums and arts venues and video makers, including,

but not limited to:

Almeida Theatre

British Museum

Chichester Festival Theatre

Curve Theatre, Leicester

Donmar Warehouse

Edinburgh Book Festival

Gúna Nua Theatre

Kiln Theatre

Leo Powell

Mercury Theatre

National Gallery

National Theatre

Palace Theatre & Opera House,

National Museums Scotland

Manchester

Sage Gateshead

Shakespeare's Globe

Stratford East

Talawa Theatre

Tamasha Theatre Company

Theatre 503

The Old Vic

Tate

Towner Eastbourne

Victoria & Albert Museum

West Midlands Museum Development

Edinburgh International Book Festival

How to apply

To make an application, please read our Project Delivery Manager Job Description on our website

• Fill in the Equal Opportunities form: Project Delivery Manager (Maternity Cover) - Equality and diversity monitoring form Survey

• Fill in the application form on our website: https://www.stagetext.org/working-for-stagetext/

Please tell us as much as possible about your skills, knowledge and experience. Send the application to: liz@stagetext.org

• The deadline for applications: Midnight Sunday 9th August 2026.

Interviews: Week beginning 24th August 2026.

What happens next

Once applications are assessed, we will contact you via email to let you know if you have been invited to an interview.

We are committed to accessibility and inclusion. If you require any adjustments or support such as BSL support, during the application or interview process, please let us know and we will be happy to support you.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you for your interest in Stagetext

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Captions for Much Ado About Nothing, Theatre Royal Drury Lane, 2025 Photo credit: Malachy Luckie