Birmingham Queer Archive – Lead Interviewer

Birmingham Queer Archive: Oral Histories Lead Interviewer

Location: Birmingham LGBT Centre, 151 Hurst St, Birmingham B5 6EW

Fixed-Term Contract: £9,000 (Effective 1 day/week, £300/day, 30 weeks)

Job Type: Freelance contract, beginning April 2026

Background

Birmingham LGBT delivers a range of services to the LGBTQ+ community in Birmingham and the West Midlands, including trans services, wellbeing support, counselling, sexual health promotion, youth work, older people’s support, arts and domestic violence (IDVA) services. We are based at Birmingham LGBT Centre, the first LGBT Health and Wellbeing Centre in England and Wales.

The Birmingham Queer Archive will tell the story of Birmingham’s LGBTQ+ heritage from the 1960s to the present day paying particular emphasis to the previously overlooked accounts of women, Global Majority, trans and non-binary voices.

We will present new and refreshed oral histories alongside ephemera and images from Birmingham’s queer social history, presenting the new collection through an accessible and intersectional lens, hosted on an online interactive archive which will be explored through expert talks and a long-term public exhibition.

Birmingham Queer Archive actively encourages applications from people underrepresented in the heritage, cultural, and creative sector. This includes people who are racialised, those who identify as, (d)Deaf, disabled and/or neurodiverse, trans and non-binary, and those who are care experienced.

Job Description

We are looking for someone experienced in supporting LGBTQ+ people from a diverse range of backgrounds to share their stories and to lead a team of two assistant  interviewers.

Responsibilities include:

Operational

• Support and guide initial project planning and approaches, working closely with the Project Producer and Project Curator.
• Record oral history interviews with a range of LGBTQ+ people from diverse backgrounds, ensuring a comfortable and supportive environment for participants.
• Summarise and, where appropriate, note, key metadata, and transcribe excerpts of recordings ready for cataloguing, tagging and archiving.
• Guide conversations to ensure interviews contain engaging and relevant content suitable for use in the project.
• Manage documentation and permissions to ensure compliant recordings.
• Provide emotional support to participants, ensuring they are aware of available resources if the interview process is triggering.

Communication & Management

• Communicate with the Project Producer to fulfil the administrative needs of the project, including when arranging interview times and locations.
• Communicate with the Project Producer to fulfil monitoring, evaluation and reporting requirements, including data collection and regular progress updates.
• Manage the work activity of two assistant interviewers, setting tasks, reviewing progress to ensure quality and relevancy of content, supporting and advising where necessary.
• Provide development opportunities to the assistant interviewers where appropriate, for example, allowing them to shadow interviews.
• Track relevant project expenses as agreed with Project Producer.
• Attend monthly project meetings and adhere to reporting and check-in requirements.

Training & Compliance

• Attend training sessions covering: recording oral history, archive management and data-protection legislation, and mental-health first-aider training.
• Work to agreed Oral History Society guidelines.
• Maintain high standards of data protection and digital security.
• Adhere to relevant policies (Safeguarding, Health & Safety, Data Privacy and Equality, Diversity & Inclusion).

Expected Outputs

• Record and process approximately 30 short (30-minute) oral history interviews with support from two assistant interviewers – after initial training and shadowing, the assistants will independently record interviews to add to this total.

Person Specification

Essential

• Experience of recording interviews to be shared publicly, e.g. oral histories, podcasts and radio interviews.
• Able to make people from a range of different backgrounds feel comfortable and confident being recorded and sharing their own experiences.
• Able to record interviews to a high standard, taking the lead on both recording processes and content, to ensure the quality of both.
• Be based in Birmingham or able to travel regularly to Birmingham to record the majority of interviews in the Birmingham area.
• Be empathetic and sensitive to issues around gender, sexuality, mental health and discrimination.
• Be confident in using professional-standard audio recording equipment.
• Be patient, attentive to details, and caring towards participants.

Desirable

• Experience of line management, or similar experience supporting people to work towards a shared outcome.

The successful applicant will be working with:

Project Manager: Phoebe Rose Gilmore (they/them)
Phoebe is a full-time queer and die-hard brummie, with a background in archaeology and events.

Project Curator & Marketing Lead: Lacey McFadyen (she/her)
Lacey is Birmingham’s premier marketing babe, femme pride champion, and pussycat lover.

Assistant Interviewers x2: To be recruited.

How To Apply

Send an up-to-date CV (this can be in the form of a link to a website or Linked In if it saves you time), a covering letter of no longer than two sides of A4 or a video/voice note of no longer than 5 minutes and the completed Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form from the Pack below to shoutfestival@blgbt.org
Shout Lead Interviewer Pack

You must submit all three documents for us to consider your application.

Applications must be received by 10am on Monday 6 April. We will not penalise applications that are a few minutes late, but please be respectful of other applicants by not submitting applications hours or days late.
If you require any information in a different format, please email shoutfestival@blgbt.org

We expect to interview short-listed candidates in between 13 and 17 April 2026, and we will be sending interview questions in advance.