Are you a talented, intellectually curious writer with a passion for finding creative ways to communicate complex ideas for a wider audience? Are you a collaborative and dynamic individual looking for an exciting new challenge?

If so, Nesta is looking for a Content Editor to join our team, where you will manage thought leadership activity for the Discovery Hub, helping us to capture the impact of emerging innovations in science, technology and social policy.

About Nesta and the Discovery Hub

Our vision is that by 2030, Nesta will have improved the lives of millions of people by designing, testing and scaling new solutions to society’s biggest challenges.

We have chosen to focus on three guiding missions – equalising life chances, building healthier lives, and supporting a sustainable economic recovery.  In each of these areas, we will partner with frontline organisations to generate and rigorously evaluate new interventions, and support their widespread adoption.  We will support the creation of new products and ventures, and shape the system as a whole to support innovation.

Working with a range of delivery partners, we will deploy multi-disciplinary teams that bring together capabilities in design, data science, behavioural insights, experimental research, and arts and culture methods.  We believe that by bringing together innovation methods to design, experiment, rigorously evaluate, and scale innovations, we can be a world leader in driving innovation for social good.

The Discovery Hub will play a critical role as Nesta’s ‘bridging’ function. It will create a link between Nesta’s current portfolio and our pipeline of future work, testing the potential of novel ideas and methods before graduating them into our programmes. The Hub will produce internal analysis to help guide decision-making about Nesta’s areas of work in the years to come, while for external audiences we will be producing a range of creative products such as data visualisations, audio visual content and interactive media to sit alongside reports, essays and blogs.

About this exciting opportunity

Working closely with the Director of Discovery, as Content Editor you will oversee and edit our team’s flagship outputs, ensuring that they are capable of capturing the attention of a discriminating target audience. To achieve this, you will be expected to:

• Create a distinctive voice for Discovery work on future trends, and deliver Discovery’s content strategy

• Draft original content (eg, blogs, webpages and project updates) as well as synthesising content authored by multiple authors (e.g. data visualisations, qualitative research) into a single output with a coherent voice

• Devise creative ideas for Discovery thought leadership products and project manage their delivery

• Support and coach other team members to develop creative ways of communicating their work

• Ensure all information about the work of the Discovery Hub is kept up to date on Nesta’s website

What we are looking for

A versatile writer and editor, with a journalistic eye for messaging and narrative development, you will possess the ability to grasp complex ideas with the skills to translate this into language that can connect with a non-expert audience. You are likely to be able to tap into extensive network of scientists, technologists or creatives. Ideally you will also have a demonstrable knowledge of social innovation and emerging technologies in particular, while familiarity with the world of futures and foresight would be beneficial

An outstanding communicator, both verbal and written, you are likely to have had experience writing for a public audience (perhaps for popular science or technology publications) , while an academic grounding in the fields of Science Communication or public engagement with science and technology would be highly beneficial. Previous experience working with data scientists or in developing data visualisations would be another asset in the role.

Closing date: 8am Tuesday 2nd March, 2021.

First interviews will be held week commencing 8th March 2021 (via Zoom). Second interviews will be held the following week (via Zoom).

At Nesta, we believe that a diverse workforce leads to an organisation that is more innovative, more creative and gets better results.

We want our workforce to represent the diversity of the people and communities we serve.  We also want our workplace to be one where different experiences, expertise and perspectives are valued, and where everyone is encouraged to grow and develop.

This means that when we are recruiting, we actively seek to reach a diverse pool of candidates.  It also means that we are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that potential employees may need to in order to be successful.

We recognise the importance of a good balance between work and home life, so we do everything we can to accommodate flexible working, including working from home, compressed or part-time hours, job shares and other arrangements.

Please just let us know in your application or at any stage throughout the process (and beyond) if these are options you would like to explore.