CREATIVE DOCUMENTERS WANTED - Can you help us tell the CBC story?

Can you help us tell our story? 

The Creative Black Country team are looking for talented creative documenters (this includes, photographers, filmmakers, animators and illustrators, designers) to help tell our story in 2024 and 2025. 

 CBC work with communities in Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton to explore and develop new creative projects with local people in the places where they live. We love to see how creativity can help change people’s lives, support wellbeing and make a difference in local communities. 

Due to our strands of work, we often have many communities and creatives making work and designing projects throughout the year. They are diverse in style, unique to their place, fun to take part in, engaging, and can also deal with serious issues. However, they come about, and via whatever strand of our work, we’d really like to share more of these stories. 

Since 2015 CBC has been supporting communities to co-create projects and we’d love to start sharing the impact it has had in a more visually led style. We produce regular reports, but we know that capturing moving images can help further elevate words from the written page.  

We want to use engaging short-form videos to tell some of the stories that we often hear but don’t always get to capture. It’s important for us to share the difference a project has had in for instance; building a person’s confidence; or how a project has helped shape someone’s future. How a project has brought together a small community of people with shared interests; or has helped up-skill them in some way. 

What we are looking for 

We are looking for a duo or small collective to work with us over the next 12 months to help us bring some of these unique stories to life through video, animation, illustration and graphics. 

Ideally, we’re looking for a talented lead filmmaker with a diverse set of skills who has a great list of contacts that can work to put several short films together that will be shared on multiple platforms. 

We will potentially be looking to develop a larger piece of work in 2025 for our 10-year anniversary. 

Objective : 

The primary objective is to raise awareness of Creative Black Country’s projects and their impact on people, as well as engaging our audience with new content. 

Scope of Work: 

The selected person/s will be responsible for shooting and editing compelling video content that aligns with CBCs brand and resonates with our target audience across various social media platforms. You will also be required to: 

  • Collaborate with our team to understand the objectives, target audience, and key messages. 

  • Develop creative concepts for video content based on the projects / people chosen or put forward by the CBC team. 

  • Plan and execute video shoots, ensuring high-quality footage and production values. 

  • Include an element of graphic, illustrative or animation detail to help the videos stand out. 

  • Edit and deliver final video content that meets our specifications and is optimised for various social media platforms. 

  • Provide all necessary licenses and permissions for music, people featured, and other elements used in the videos. 

  • Ensure that videos (where required) are fully captioned. 

  • Work with us to compile a bank of visuals (photography, illustrations) to represent place, neighbourhoods and communities that we work in and with.  

Experience: 

We are seeking a lead who has: 

  • Experience in creating engaging and effective video content for social media. 

  • A portfolio that demonstrates creativity, storytelling ability, and technical proficiency. 

  • Great interviewing skills and can get to the bottom of a story / project. 

  • Familiarity with current trends in social media. 

  • Ability to work collaboratively with our team and meet project deadlines. 

  • Excellent communication and organisational skills. 

  • Is confident in speaking and dealing with members of the wider Black Country Community. 

  • Can work on their own initiative, is self-motivated, can get themselves to events and can work safely alone. 

  • Will feel comfortable representing CBC and being an ambassador. 

  • Will be able to liaise with agreed / chosen creatives to help enhance / deliver the projects. 

 

Ideally, we’d like a team / person/s who are based in the Black Country, knows the area well, can get around with their kit and has a good general idea of the creative scene. 

Submission Guidelines: 

Interested filmmakers / content producers are requested to submit the following by Monday 4th March, 2024: to kerry@creativeblackcountry.co.uk.

  • A proposal outlining your approach to the project, including creative concepts. 

  • Details of who in your network you will collaborate with (e.g. an illustrator / animator / filmmaker). 

  • A portfolio link showcasing relevant work, including links to social media campaigns / videos/projects you have previously worked on (especially collaboratively). 

  • An outline of what you would produce for the budget below. (For example, x amounts of short films / x amount of longer form pieces / x amount of moving social media content). 

Please note at this point we are NOT expecting a HUGE document of information - please try to keep info to the points outlined above. Links to portfolios will be fine. Please email NO MORE THAN A 3 PAGE DOCUMENT.

BUDGET 

We have a total budget of up to £20,000 for this work. The project will start around April 2024 and complete January 2025. We will then look at the potential of taking the project further. The budget would be distributed throughout the contract on delivery of agreed targets.

 

Timelines 
Deadlne for submissions – Monday 4th March 2024.

We’ll contact you to let you know if we’d like to chat further or not by 18th March.

We’ll be looking to contract the successful applicant/s early April to begin from mid-April onwards.  
The contract will last until the end of January 2024.