Bedford School

Non-profit leader. Storyteller focused on engaging and enchanting audiences for long-term, mutually beneficial support. (He/Him)

Following the successful development of the business case to create this role, I filled it on an interim/acting basis while a permanent member of staff was recruited.

In the first six months of the role, we developed the first strategic plan for engaging with high-level stakeholders. I also devised a proposed new structure for the policy and communications functions of the team, and delivering refreshed communications, content and creative approaches.

With the CEO, I established core internal processes including recruitment, induction and information/data management. I also worked to help understand our data and how we could apply analysis and insight into what we do. That included a major internal project to review and restructure our data to make sure it was both GDPR compliant and worked in the way we needed it to as part of the creation of a customer journey to enchant our community with engaging, expected emails.

Autistica

Acting Director of External Affairs

Reporting directly to the CEO and working collaboratively across the organisation, the aim of the role was to help tell Autistica’s story to a wider audience. Despite being much smaller than other charities in the autism space, the organisation is uniquely placed to have significant impact by turning science into action in the real world.

As an interim, I worked to establish systems and processes for content creation, campaign planning and internal communications that allow team members from across the organisation to collect and tell their stories in the most frictionless ways.

In my time with Autistica, I achieved a significant increase in media coverage, punching well above our weight as a small organisation. We also saw an increase in social media engagement and a positive shift in sentiment after some challenging communications periods.

At the end of my first six months, we had created a business case for enhancing this role into a director of external affairs to take on a broader remit externally and expand the senior leadership team internally.

Head of Marketing & Communications (Interim)

With a passionate and vocal community who demand a lot from the organisation, I sat on the Senior Leadership Team and led a department of marketing, communications, events, digital and campaigning professionals delivering ever-deeper engagement and involvement designed around the needs of people with cystic fibrosis, using compelling storytelling to engage and enchant our supporters with the difference they are making through their support of the Trust.

In my six years at the Trust, I re-shaped the team, redeveloped the overall approach communications, social media and content production and saw continued growth across all areas of the team. 

As part of the SLT, I led the Trust through three major periods of organisational change: an office move from our old office in Bromley to a new central London location that included significant shifts in culture and ways of working; a change of CEO including a gap of three months, and; a whole-organisation review and restructure to prepare the Trust for the next phase in its development. All of these were powered and supported by an on-going, sector-leading digital transformation project that touched every corner or the organisation, from finance systems to marketing automation, from clinical trial sign-ups to remote participation. 

My team led on and/or supported campaigns that increased in corporate income, grew individual giving through an improved digital customer journey and the epically long, ultimately successful, multi-year push to achieve access to life-changing new treatments for more than 90% of the UK population of people with cystic fibrosis, delivering renewed hope that a life unlimited by CF may one day be possible.

I am proud to have left the organisation in a better place than I found it thanks to dedicated work from my colleagues on the SLT, the past and present members of my team and the support of the CF community who drove us to be better, do better and achieve more.

Cystic Fibrosis Trust

Director of Marketing & Communications

Joining an organisation who had never used social media in a strategic way, nor employed anyone specifically for that purpose, I developed the first strategy for digital engagement, focusing on delighting child sponsors through compelling and engaging content telling stories about the lives of the children the organisation supports. In the first 12 months I increased organic reach 4x and engagement 3x year-on-year. 

As a global organisation work in more than 70 countries, it's vital that all of the offices across the partnership were coordinated in their approaches while being sensitive to local markets. After a colleague stepped down from the role, I was asked to chair a cross-partnership group of social media managers and strategists to share our learning and resources from around the world for strategic and tactical impact. When Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines in 2014, this coordination helped our ability to quickly and effectively start telling stories from the ground and was a major part in making it one of the most successful emergency appeals in the organisation's history.

With such little knowledge of the power of storytelling social media when I arrived, I worked tirelessly to help senior members of the UK office understand the impact it could have, upskilling key members of the marketing and communications team as well as generating a process for identifying and sharing stories internally to help create high-quality, impactful content for use online.

World Vision UK

Social Media Communities Manager

Hey Sonny Films (then called markthree media) produced web and broadcast video content for brands and television companies. I worked closely with the Development Producer to create broadcast pitches and corporate concepts, designing and creating pitch decks to win new clients. As part of my remit to support an increase in brand awareness and attract new clients, I also handled all of the company's social media profiles and website.

As a small company, during my 12 months there I served variously as a producer, shooting AP, director and production manager. Most commonly serving in the latter role, I handled logistics of all of the on-going films, managing multiple projects at any one time, liasing with clients and crew and ensuring the producers and directors had what they needed to create the best possible finished products.

Hey Sonny Films

Assistant Producer

Established the social media brand and voice for the festival, gathered support and interactive, engaged followers.

Produced daily behind-the-scenes festival summaries.

London Screenwriters' Festival

Festival Communications Lead

Coordinated the schedule and crew for the intense 3-day shoot, including firefighting on set and protecting the director as much as possible from the daily stresses of a shoot.

Stada Media

Production Manager, Love Like Hers

Coordinated pre-production and shooting schedules for 'ELLIE', staying ahead of the curve on location and staffing issues, timekeeping and company moves.

Bigger Pictures

Production Manager/AP

Driven by the passion developed in my education role at Milton Keynes Theatre (see below), I set out to work with more and more children and young people through arts workshops encompassing theatre, photography and filmmaking. 

My focus was always on process and not outputs, allowing a better creative connection to young people who aren’t not focused on a “final performance” but instead on developing and exploring their creativity and encouraging them to think differently.

I developed confidence, artistic and creative expression, and open-minded thinking in young people from a variety of backgrounds and a range of abilities, including working with people with disabilities and special educational needs

Developed a deeper personal understanding of the impact of the arts on the challenges faced by young people from all walks of life, as well as the barriers to involvement

Freelance

Creative Practitioner

From charities to major brands, one-man bands and government projects, filmmakers to theatre companies, I devised strategies and plans to tell great stories in the ways that most resonated with target audiences.

As a filmmaker, I produced more than 50 short films for the web and broadcast, including 2 short BBC documentaries and branded content for companies and organisations as diverse as Philips, Action Medical Research and Creative Partnerships

Having been approached by a couple of local organisations, I developed a focus working with charity brands on demonstrating impact through storytelling, using beneficiary stories to increased engagement from donors and supporters.

During a strong time for arts funding across the UK, I produced evaluation films, photography and written reports for Arts Council England-funded projects in schools and local authority areas.

Digital Strategist and Video Content Producer

Fixed-term contract supporting all in-house productions with planning, logistics and execution. Included production managing the youth theatre.

Northampton Theatres Trust

Production Assistant

At a new theatre in the centre of a new city, I helped establish a new role in the education department to form a programme of creative engagement with the surrounding community, supporting and supervising workshops delivered by in-house teams and practitioners as well as visiting companies. Our focus was always on education through entertainment and embracing creative approaches to problem solving.

In building the youth theatre programme along with the creative pracitioner who delivered the in-house workshops we worked to use it as a safe space to explore creativity and grow in self-confidence and other "soft" skills rather than simply focusing on an "end product" of a performance.

When the youth theatre did build towards main-stage productions (roughly every 18 months), I served as both production and stage manager while supporting young people to learn those roles and other behind-the-scenes roles from crew members across departments in the theatre.

Over my four years in the role I built relationships with the education departments of some of the biggest touring companies in the country to help us begin to tailor their education and outreach offering to the Milton Keynes community and increase engagement with our audience. 

It was also vital to make sure that accessible options were available for as many productions as possible, including booking and coordinating BSL interpretation, hearing loops and touch-tours of the sets and costumes for blind and partially-sighted audience members.

Ambassador Theatre Group

Education and Outreach Coordinator

Starting as front of house bar staff, I would go on to serve as Box Office Assistant and Stage Door Receptionist before my appointment in the newly-created role of Education and Outreach Assistant. I continued many of these roles on a part-time and casual basis after my appointment.

I learned how to make the perfect gin and tonic, which has served me well over the course of the rest of my life.

Oli Lewington