Freelance Skills Leader

Contact is an arts centre in Manchester, offering free-to-access activities in music, theatre and dance, for young people to build confidence, skills and community.

In a project funded by Youth Music we are offering paid training in writing and delivering workshops to young people working in a music-focussed practise in Manchester. Over two years we will train 20 participants in workshop facilitation and freelance skills: tax, financial management, finding work and building networks, to support them in forging a freelance career.

We are recruiting a Freelance Skills Leader to devise and deliver training for young people to learn the essential skills for self-employment. The training should provide practical training in processing invoices, managing income from self-employment and navigating tax. The Freelance Skills Leader will have experience of being self-employed and be confident in explaining the financial processes associated with self-assessment tax returns and freelance finances more generally.

THE ROLE

As the Freelance Skills Leader we will ask you to:

• Attend a meeting at Contact with our Engagement Manager and the Course Leader to discuss delivery, course topics and a delivery timeline

• Create teaching resources to guide your own delivery of the course

• Liaise with Contact’s Engagement Manager on your progress and the progress of the course participants.

Teaching for the course spans 9 weeks in two cycles

• CYCLE 1: September 01 – October 27th 2025

• CYCLE 2: March 24th – 19th May 2026

We ask that the successful candidate is free for these dates as well as one day in August 2025 – to be decided upon appointment and based on mutual availability of the team. Please see the number of delivery days required below.

FEE BREAKDOWN

The fee for this role is £500.

• £100 for ½ day planning meeting at Contact with our Engagement Manger and the Freelance Skills Leader in August 2025

• £200 for two half-days of delivery (half-day is 4 hours) at Contact

• £175 for full day of course planning at the discretion of the post-holder

• £25 for travel

THE CANDIDATE

This training is specifically focussed on recruiting participants from Global Majority backgrounds; we are therefore positively encouraging applicants for this role who are from the Global Majority.

Essential:

• A strong understanding of freelance tax return process

• Minimum three years’ experience of being self-employed and managing own income and tax.

• An enhanced DBS

Desirable:

• Experience of using your financial knowledge to train others

• Knowledge of google sheets or equivalent – it is important to us that the training is delivered using examples of free-to-access software that will be available to our participants after the course. We therefore ask the course is not modelled around Microsoft Excel, Xero or other paid-for financial management tools.

• An interest in Arts and Culture

The successful candidate will align with and uphold Contact's core values. We exist to empower young people through creativity, supporting them in finding ways to be expressive, to be agents of social change and to forge their own paths in and outside of the arts.

TO APPLY

Please attach your CV and a covering letter outlining how you meet the criteria for this role. 

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS is Wednesday 25th June 2025