Freelancer: Building Better Reporting

Description

Role - Freelancer – Building Better Reporting.

Timescales – Delivery between June and July 2026 with potential to extend.

Location - Activity will be delivered remotely with regular attendance onsite at Crafts Council premises based on the Pentonville Road in Islington, London.

Reporting to - Director of Programmes.

Working Closely With - All colleagues.

Fee - £400 per day exclusive of VAT and expenses, estimating the brief will take 10 days.

About the Brief

Crafts Council has been working hard at improving how we capture evidence and stories of our impact. Alongside our need to report to funders (we are an Arts Council England (ACE), National Portfolio Organisation) to release payments, our reporting provides the evidence base for our annual reporting and public accountability. We want to be more confident and consistent in telling the story of how our work makes a difference—aligning our impact narrative with our values, while meeting funders’ needs.

Reporting is currently coordinated by the Director of Programmes using submissions from colleagues captured in a shared spreadsheet. Submission quality and adherence to deadlines are inconsistent.

We are seeking experienced freelance support to:

• Improve quality of reporting colleagues capture and share
• establish a reliable reporting rhythm
• provide hands-on editorial support – collating information into text that are fit for purpose, evidence-led and report-ready.

Scope of Work

• Mobilisation and discovery: confirm reporting timetable, review and confirm the right people have responsibility for reporting on the right areas.
• ‘What good looks like’ guidance: produce a short, practical guidance note and example responses that demonstrate strong narrative and clear impact storytelling, mapping to ACE and Crafts Council Impact Framework; evidence; learning; audience/participant insight; equality, diversity and inclusion considerations; environmental responsibility where relevant. Guidance should help colleagues connect outcomes to our values as well as funder requirements.
• Training and engagement: design and deliver a workshop session for colleagues to bring this guidance to life, reinforce how/when to submit (including the consequences of late or incomplete returns) and hear about challenges and barriers. Colleagues will build confidence in telling stories that are succinct but impactful.
• Clearer report-writing: work with individual project leads to strengthen draft submissions; adding clarity, specificity, evidence and reflection without changing the underlying facts. Support should also help colleagues draw out the ‘so what’ (what changed, for whom, and why it matters) so reporting clearly communicates impact and aligns with Crafts Council values.
• Quarterly draft report: produce a consolidated draft quarterly monitoring narrative (and/or populated template) for review by the Director of Programmes. This should go beyond collation to provide a coherent, funder-ready story of the quarter, clearly linking activity to outcomes and learning; where useful, include a small number of short illustrative examples/vignettes grounded in evidence.
• Continuous improvement: following first report review impact of interventions with Director of Programmes to see if further intervention is needed.

About You

We are looking for a candidate who is experienced in cultural-sector reporting and storytelling, who can reinforce the structures for colleagues to deliver consistent, evidence-led submissions on time.

You will be confident working across teams, able to train and coach contributors, and skilled at turning mixed inputs (e.g., spreadsheet submissions) into clear, funder-ready narrative that is inspiring and informative.

You are calm under pressure, highly organised, and solutions-focused, easily able to work to deadlines and manage multiple strands at once.