We are looking for a marketing and project management professional to work with Real Ideas and the Cities of Learning (COL) UK partnership to launch Cities of Learning Badge school.

Badge school is a community of organisations committed to recognising individuals for the learning and experiences they gain outside of formal accredited learning. Badge school has grown out of the community of issuing organisations started through the cities of learning pilot cities. It is a membership platform which holds a bank of resources to support issuers (any organisation who wants to issue a badge) to write and issue cities of learning open standard badges. It is the engine behind the cities of learning movement. By joining Badge School, organisations will be joining a community “Badging for Britain”.

As part of this piece of work we are looking for someone who will:

1. Work with the Real Ideas team and the COL UK partnership to oversee the final stages of development of the COL Badge school website. This will include:

1. Account managing the relationship between our web developers, the badge school dev team and Navigator (badge tech partners) to ensure that the badge school product is delivered on time and to the desired spec

1. Ensuring the UX for badge school customers is prioritised

1. Pulling together and evolving existing COL assets into a badge school marketing and promotional pack that can be used by all COL partners to promote and sell badge school:

1. Work with the Real Ideas marketing team and COL UK Team to design and implement badge school marketing/recruitment campaigns across our key issuer audiences:

• Employers (who engage with and invest in the future workforce)
• FE Colleges and Training provider networks
• Arts and Cultural organisations
• Employment support providers (including all ERSA members)

• Schools
• Voluntary and third sector orgs
• Other Informal learning providers

Outcomes this work needs to deliver

• Campaign assets for badge school that can be used to drive ongoing recruitment

• Successful Launch of COL Badge School
• Increased awareness of COL and Badge School within our key issuer audiences and their stakeholders/funders
• The running of parallel below the line recruitment campaigns across our key issuer audiences that lead to meaningful Badge School uptake

Assets available

• You will have access to all existing Cities of Learning assets and brand collateral and access to the agency used to develop the assets

• You will have access to the marketing and comms teams of the COL UK partners (RSA, Navigatr, Brighton Dome and Pavilion as well as the team at Real Ideas)
• You will be able to draw on the existing networks and connectivity of the COL UK partners who have considerable reach and reputational value in the audiences we are working in

Time frame

• We would like the successful bidder to start work asap, no later than 1st Dec 2020, with a view to the work being completed in April 2021.

Budget

• There is a maximum of £8,000 available for professional fees for a freelance Marketing/ PR/ project manager to complete this full package of work. Should your business be VAT registered this fee is inclusive of VAT. Expenses will not be paid in addition to the fee.
• The campaigns referenced are BTL – we do not expect there to be any cost to campaign activation, other than the creation of assets.
• A creative agency for the development of campaign assets is in place for you to work with, you do not need to include design/creative fees as part of your quote.
• Budget for the web development sits outside of this package of work – you do not need to include web development costs here, but you will need to allocate time inside of this fee to account managing the developers and overseeing the web development process.

To respond

Please prepare a brief outline (no more than 2 sides of A4, or 4 slides in a deck) of your approach detailing:

• How much support this fee will buy in from you – in hours or a consolidated day rate
• An indicative schedule of work from December 2020 to April 2021
• How much time you will allocate to the delivery of each strand of activity
• Your suitability for the work given past experience delivering similar projects and campaigns

• Two references we can approach who can speak to your ability to deliver this kind of project

Please send your outline proposal to jenny.bishop@realideas.org by no later than Midday on Monday 23rd November 2020.