Uncategorized

Storytelling PR is looking for a new Publicist / Comms Expert.

This post will start in May 2022 and is not a new role, but one that we are looking for someone brilliant to make their own. Interviews will be held on Wednesday 13 April and applications close on Friday 08 April at 5pm. If you have an access requirement please do not hesitate to contact us.

Storytelling PR Ltd is a PR and Comms company based in Edinburgh. We work between Scotland’s capital, Glasgow and London. We often work with international arts companies selling mostly to British audiences and with touring work – which can range from large cities through to tiny villages. Storytelling PR has a huge focus on theatre and performance that has an interest in social change or activism. We love good stories and good storytellers. We define our work by feminist / equalitist ethics and we feel it’s important our work and our services are available to both up-and-coming and established artists and companies – this has always been key to our practice and we actively ensure our client / company list is diverse. We are intersectional feminists, Queer-positive and actively anti-racist. We seek to collaborate with artists of all identities and we take the time to do the learning and work to support our artists and staff.

Storytelling PR Ltd is an equal opportunities employer and we welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their race, gender, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation or age. We strongly believe that diversity in the workplace is an asset both to our organisation and our ability to deliver for our diverse client and company base.

This is a fantastic opportunity for someone who enjoys working within a fast-paced environment as part of a small and dynamic team.

Main purpose of role:

• To be an integral member of the Storytelling Team working across Publicity and with a genuine interest and perspective on other areas of the business (marketing, digital). 
• To collaborate with artists, companies, and live event makers. 
• To work across many varied campaigns leading on some, supporting on others. 
• To (essentially) be a representative to the media of some of the UK’s best theatre and live performance creatives in a way that the companies feel matches their own vibe and work. 

What you will be doing:

• Delivering or supporting PR campaigns for all of Storytelling PR’s many and varied theatre, performance, and activism companies and clients across the UK. PR and Digital campaigns will include writing excellent fully finished press releases, issuing and pitching, logging all on a project WIP, keeping good records of who is engaged and interested in the work, looking for new contacts and matches for the work across a broad range of media. 

• Engaging closely with a network of press media and with our companies to sell their work to audiences. 
• Actively listening. As we work with Minoritised, Ethnically Diverse and Disability led companies there are often new conversations and considerations that need thought – from access, to the restraints of structurally problematic industries on all sides. You will hear often about Racism, Homophobia and Ableism. As you will be the intermediary between our brilliant companies and our colleagues in the press you’ll be expected to be aware of what support companies need. 
• Working on our world-class Edinburgh Festival Fringe portfolio of leading performance art, dance, theatre, circus, cabaret and international theatre work. 
• Running media calls and photoshoots for both news press and magazine coverage. 

Essential

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• A strategic and creative thinker.
• An ability to interpret creative practice for paper or pitching in a way that is clear and concise. 
• Demonstrable knowledge of, and interest in, issues surrounding diversity and inclusion in the arts.
• A keen interest in culture – be that music, theatre, performance, pop culture or anything else.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, and proven ability to collaborate with team-mates on projects.
• Ability to be based in Edinburgh for work from April/May 2022.
• Press contacts and a keen interest in culture, media and reportage. 
• Highly organised, with a demonstrable ability to keep track of tasks, prioritise work under pressure and deliver against set targets to agreed deadlines. 
• Someone who thrives in a busy environment – you can decide what resources you wish to rely on (be that a trusty notebook, a gsheet or trello) but you’ll need to be across your work and feel comfortable multitasking on busy days.
• Five years experience in the media world (be that as a journalist / PR / communications specialist) and experience working in a busy comms office or working within a press outlet. 
• Active listening skills

Desirable

• Social media and marketing know-how / interest. 
• A keen interest and enthusiasm in seeing work live (when we can) and engaging with the Scottish and British theatre and performance art scene.
• An interest in activism and changing the world. 
• Experience leading on content creation ideas through to execution and in close collaboration with colleagues. 

Storytelling PR Publicist 

Salary – salary will fit the applicant and will be offered based on experience between £25,000 – £28,000 annually. Storytelling staff receive an annual payrise and there is opportunity for staff to have a contribution towards counselling or therapy, because we think it’s very important to have good mental health! 

We work from a light, buzzy (and often busy) office in Summerhall, Edinburgh. 

We welcome applicants to send a cover letter and CV to finance@storytellingpr.com. The deadline for applications is Friday 08 April and applications are welcome any time before then. 

Have a look at our equal opps doc here. 

This role will be based in Edinburgh. We are currently working a mixed set up of home and office work, with an expectation of in person work weekly. There is opportunity for travel work across the UK through the year as required, for meetings with companies and media and to see work.

For further information please contact finance@storytellingpr.com. 

This October, Summerhall turns the Red Lecture Theatre into Summerhall Cinema – the only cinema on the Southside of Edinburgh – with a brand-new cinema programme. Tickets for Summerhall Cinema – opening on Friday 1 October – go on sale today, Wednesday 15 September. 

Cosy up this Autumn with all your favourite new movies, cutting-edge cinema technology and a warming drink from Summerhall’s Gallery Bar. Creating a top-of-the-line movie going experience, The Red Lecture Theatre has been upgraded with Dolby 5.1 surround sound and cinema-grade DCP projection, creating an immersive, intimate cinema experience for film fans throughout Edinburgh to enjoy. These upgrades have been made possible thanks to Screen Scotland’s Cinema Equipment Fund. 

The Red Lecture Theatre has previously been used as a cinema by many of our favourite film organisations including Edinburgh Short Film Festival, Cinefile, French Film Festival and Cinematic, as well as Summerhall’s own seasonal programmes. Now, Summerhall makes its cinema a weekly feature with film programmes including CineHall and Screen Horizons, as well as one-off and guest screenings. The brand-new programme will feature a mix of new releases, independent studio titles, modern horror, retrospectives and world cinema gems. Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, audiences can choose from six diverse and exciting titles – or settle in for a movie marathon – from across the full spectrum of cinema. 

Audiences at the Summerhall Cinema’s opening weekend, from Friday 1 October will enjoy: First Cow, a perceptive, slow-burn Western set in the 19th Century Pacific Northwest from director Kelly Reichardt; a raucous day out in the streets of Edinburgh with director Michael Caton Jones’ Our Ladies, adapted from Alan Warner’s novel The Sopranos; genre-director favourite Edgar Wright’s first documentary, a musical odyssey through five decades, The Sparks Brothers; and the British debut from Edinburgh-based director Ben Sharrock – Limbo – a deadpan comedy drama following a Syrian refugee who finds himself in a refugee centre on a remote Scottish island – the first feature-length film to be shot on Uist. 

On Sundays, Screen Horizons will screen a series of international titles, programmed by the French Film Festival. The first offerings on Sunday 3 October will include The Swallows of Kabul (Les Hirondelles de Kaboul), an animated drama by Zabou Breitman and Éléa Gobbé-Mévellec which portrays life under Taliban control and The Lady in the Portrait (Le Portrait Interdict), a sumptuous costume epic in Mandarin and French which evokes the unique rapport between a French missionary and the Manchurian empress, directed by Charles de Meaux.  

Summerhall Cinema will also play host to one-off screenings and events, including a cinema takeover from Edinburgh’s newest poetry festival Push The Boat Out, screening a series of specially-selected feature length movies, short documentaries, diverse animations and more from 15 – 17 October. A one-off screening from the Taiwan Film Festival on Wednesday 27 October will be accompanied by a live film score. 

Tom Forster, Summerhall Programme coordinator, commented: “As Summerhall’s first new artistic offering since Nothing Ever Happens Here in 2015, we are buzzing to welcome new release cinema to the ranks with the same vibrancy championed in our contemporary theatre, music, dance, physical theatre and circus, and visual art strands.”

For tickets, further information and regular updates on Summerhall please sign up for the mailer on the Summerhall website: www.summerhall.co.uk/ 

ENDS

I started Storytelling PR in 2013. I only know this as 2012 was the last year I didn’t really *do* fringe just supported my friends at Tortoise in a Nutshell with Grit at Bedlam – the summer of the heady joy of the 2012 Olympic Games in LDN. 

Over the years since I’ve ticked off a big long list of personal stuff – from ending relationships, ill-advised affairs with decidedly odd people, brilliant adventures with people in Adelaide, Melbourne, Glasgow, London, Edinburgh – I have been so extremely lucky to be able to transfer my skills and personal joi de vie into this mad stupid industry. I have watched proudly as journalists we first knew from blogs grew into trend-setters at big papers and I’ve never failed to be slightly awkward around those writers I really respect – until I realise they are humans too. 

I have also sat on the steps outside theatres at midnight with dear friends in theatre companies and heard about assaults they have survived, I have walked to interviews and heard about racism and a underlying fear of it happening each time an artist meets the media, I have sat for a wine with performers who have needed to share the homophobic abuse they received that day. I see deep cracks and deeper flaws in the theatre and live industry. I have become close friends with many of the artists and producers I work with. It has been an extraordinary journey and though I know I haven’t always got it right I have done my best to listen and challenge from the position I have clawed myself up to. And for me, Storytelling ceases to be when that fight and attention to our colleagues and artists isn’t at the centre, and aye, I’ll get it wrong many times more but I know I’ll do right many many times more still.  

Storytelling is called Storytelling cos the work we do is bigger than ‘Miriam Atwood’ – Storytelling provides vocation and opportunity for not only our amazing team of PR and Marketing professionals – to every single paid intern, press assistant, thank you for learning with us.

To the current Storytelling team, Emma, Emma (always a double at Storytelling) Eleanor, Erin and Sal – enjoy the lack of me randomly pulling ideas and projects out of nowhere at inconvenient time – you’re just gonna love it. To our two staff now off pursuing new things, Mim and Harry, we’ll always have the broom cupboard Storytelling was first based in. 

I mostly wanted to write this as this summer Mim Black has left Storytelling PR for pastures new in Environmental / Climate awareness PR (and mushrooms). Storytelling would not exist without them. Their born-with wisdom, their tenacity and their crazy skills smashing through a to do list – have allowed me to take the risks I wanted to – and at every step pushed me to be more dismissive of system or ideas that could have bound us as ‘just another PR company.’ Mim Black is an extraordinary human and it is entirely my privilege that we spent such insane times together fucking shit up, blagging our way through and crying a lot of tears of happiness and exhaustion. I won’t say I’ll miss her at Storytelling – what I have gained in a sister I will ALWAYS have – and I can’t wait to watch and support her as she makes real change in her new career. 

And now, I’m signing off for the first time in 8 years, to start a F*CKING FAMILY – but tbh – my family has always been everyone I sit on the back steps with, those I travel on days off on adventures with, the womxn who have taught me everything I know, those who have sat with me and offered me friendship over and above our working lives, those who have guided me and myself, the journey of learning to listen, authentically, and turn what I experience and what is shared with me, into action. The team who looked to me for guidance and somehow, most of the time, I helped them find the answers. The queer people who from my early 20s saw me as one of them, a lost, camp, pop loving drama queen, the drag artists who knew I was desperately in love with their art and their beauty, the circus performers who tip themselves upside-down 8 times a week and think nothing of it while I gaze open-mouthed, the theatre makers who leave it all out there on stage and then accept my sweaty hug at the end, the journalists who respected me before I respected myself, and the journalists who showed me I didn’t need to be scared of journalists HA (I still am though tbh). I also cannae wait to share this all with my child – and welcome them into this mad world with my beautiful husband and continue to fight for the change I want to see. 

Cos change is a coming, in many more ways than one. See you in 2022 fam.
X