This current round of trustee recruitment closed on 21st February 2021.

Macclesfield Barnaby Festival is looking to recruit a number of new trustees to our volunteer board to help us deliver our programme in 2021 and be part of shaping our future. You don’t need to have done something like this before, you need to be passionate about bringing the communities of Macclesfield together to enjoy arts, culture and creativity. 

  • If you might be interested we want to hear from you – our first step is just to arrange a chat about being involved. Send Nicola a message at chair@barnabyfestival.org.uk and we can arrange this.
  • If you need more information before we chat we have put some more below about the role and the festival. 
  • If it’s not for you, do you know someone else who might be interested?

We are keen to encourage applications from people with Black, Asian, minority ethnic backgrounds and disabled people.

You can find out more about the festival at https://barnabyfestival.org.uk/, our latest digital project at https://secondsight.barnabyfestival.org.uk/.

About the role:

  • Our trustees are Charity Trustees and Directors of the company
  • You can learn more about the legal role of a trustee here
  • We will provide induction, buddying and support for new trustees
  • We meet monthly on a Tuesday evening, and do this on-line using zoom at the moment. We will when possible meet face-to-face in central Macclesfield and sometimes still meet on-line
  • We encourage our trustees take a lead role on something for the Festival, depending on the skills, interests and time they have available
  • We are able to cover eligible expenses incurred that are necessary to enable attendance – for example: for care, child care or out of pocket travel expenses.
  • We do want to hear from everyone who is interested and has something to offer. We also know that there are some skills and experience that would be really helpful:
    • finance/ treasurer; fundraising; communications and marketing; arts and events management; charity governance.

About our plans:

Barnaby Festival celebrated its ten year anniversary in 2020. But as we all felt the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the restrictions this placed on our lives, our work and our town it was not the celebration we were expecting. While all of our original festival programme for June 2020 was cancelled Barnaby still delivered a successful programme of digital events in 2020 for a range of audiences. And we did a lot of learning on this journey. 

Arts and culture have been hugely affected by the pandemic – every aspect from our artists, performers, venues and audiences have all seen huge negative impact. Yet we also know there has been huge innovation and appetite for digital arts programming. Arts and culture will need to play a really important role in the recovery of our town and further afield as we face the long-term effects of Covid-19 and the global challenges of climate change and the need for social justice as we have seen the stark inequalities of our lives come to the fore, as highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement.

We are now working on delivering our re-shaped programme in 2021 with a number of our key partners and hopefully some new ones. These are challenging times and no-one has the answers to what the future holds but Barnaby wants to work with people in Macclesfield and other organisations to have more conversations, develop new ways of working and increase the opportunities for residents to engage in arts and cultural activities that enrich lives, create jobs, improve health and wellbeing and develop visions for what a positive future could look like.

We are looking for people who want to be part of these conversations on developing and leading our future and we look forward to hearing from you.

Interested? Please contact us at chair@barnabyfestival.org.uk for a conversation!