“I am writing to let you know that I will be resigning from Shooting Roots at the end of this summer. I feel that it is time for someone new to take the reins and breathe some new life into Shooting Roots! Thank you all for your marvellous work, energy, commitment, talent, help, enthusiasm, innovative input and, where needed, sheer bloodimindedness over the last 13 years! It has been an absolute pleasure to work with you all.” — Laurel Swift.

As Laurel is stepping down, there is a massive opportunity behind the scenes at Shooting Roots for those who want to expand their experience, gain new opportunities and make new contacts. There are three new posts have been created, to replace Laurel Swift. Each post is a one-day a week voluntary role with it’s own distinct focus, and with all with areas that cross over with the other roles, meaning good teamwork skills are vital. It will be a great team to be part of and will no doubt change, grow and develop as new staff get stuck into the jobs! These posts all have the scope to develop into a larger, paid posts.

Festival Co-ordinator - responsible for:

• Liasing with festivals;
• Constructing festival Shooting Roots programmes and building appropriate tutor
• teams;
• Managing festival budgets and contracts;
• Delivering information for publicity to the Communications Officer.
• There is scope to expand beyond the current 4 festivals we work with.

Development Officer - responsible for Shooting Roots’ work beyond festivals. This includes:

• Festival projects outside of the festival itself;
• Setting up school and community projects;
• Managing the tutor development projects and
• Administration and development of participant membership.
• Setting up Shooting Roots as a charity.

A number of grants have been submitted to assist this work.

Communications Officer - responsible for talking to the outside world about Shooting Roots. This includes:

• Liasing with Shooting Roots’s web designer and basic maintenance of the site;
• providing copy and images for festivals and projects;
• Updating Shooting Roots’ monthly fRoots advert;
• Editing the member’s newsletter or overseeing this as a delegated task;
• Creating better systems for listening and talking to tutors and participants.

Details of how to apply will appear here in the week of 9th August. Please do drop us an email if you’d like us to send this directly to you when released. Closing date for applications will be the 22nd of August. Interviews will be held later in the summer.
An advisory group is also being formed, which in time will become Shooting Roots’ trustees. The group will deal with the wider issue of how SRoots runs as an organisation and help guide the new staff where needed. If you are interested in being part of this, please get in touch.