Join our team!

Advocacy, Campaigns & Communications Manager

Reports to: Campaign Director
Working pattern: 3 to 4 days/week (0.6 to 0.8 FTE negotiable), hybrid with 2 in-office overlap days in Oxford. The Campaign Director works 2.5 days/week, so we'll coordinate schedules to ensure coverage across the week and shared delivery time for key decisions and collaboration.
Term: 1 year fixed-term contract
Target start date: Early-mid March 2025
Flexibility: We accommodate school hours and caring responsibilities where possible, and work flexibly within a clear delivery rhythm. Occasional evening/weekend work (for coalition and board meetings or events) is balanced with time off in lieu.
Location: Oxford / Oxfordshire
Salary: £39,000 to £43,000 FTE depending on experience (pro-rata), plus employer pension contribution
Holiday: 25 days plus bank holidays (pro-rata)
Probation: 3 months
Notice period: 4 weeks after probation

Why apply for this job:

Oxfordshire is in the midst of one of the UK’s most ambitious shifts away from car-dependence and towards healthy, accessible streets. That brings urgency, complexity, and real opportunity to improve everyday life for people across Oxfordshire.

In 2026, you’ll play a key part in our participatory envisioning project Future Streets Oxfordshire to build a shared, citizen-owned vision of what “liveable streets” can mean here: a vision that strengthens trust, helps more people see themselves in the future we’re trying to build, and becomes a guiding platform for advocacy, engagement and practical programmes.

At the same time, you will sit at the heart of driving advocacy for ambitious policy and outcomes. This role is for someone who can hold an advocacy line while also running a steady delivery-and-storytelling cadence, turning consultations, policy moments, coalition work and community insight into clear public communications and effective campaigning.

Day to day, you’ll help OLS lead with clarity and credibility: supporting coalition partners, responding to the news and consultation cycle, and keeping our work grounded in health, fairness, thriving neighbourhoods, and a future-fit transport system.

What it's like to work here

We're a small, mission-driven team working from The Old School House on Hertford Street in Oxford - a quirky, collaborative co-working space and a supportive community of independents. You'll have autonomy and real ownership of your work, alongside the energy and creativity that comes from working in a space full of great people doing interesting things. It's informal, focused, and genuinely enjoyable.

Our Board is committed and engaged, bringing a mix of strategic insight and practical experience. They're genuinely invested in helping us succeed - offering guidance, connections, and thoughtful challenge whilst nurturing a trust-based management approach. We have real autonomy to make decisions and try things, as long as we can make the case.

Purpose

Drive strategic advocacy, campaigning, communications and stakeholder engagement that builds mandate for liveable streets. Support communications and engagement delivery for the participatory envisioning project. Contribute to distributed administration as a small team.

Indicative Time Allocation

This role balances three core areas. The weighting will flex across the year depending on consultation cycles and project phases.

Year 1 baseline:

Advocacy, Campaigns & Communications: 70–75%
Envisioning Project comms/engagement support: 15–20%
Distributed administration: 10%

Phase weighting (guide):

Months 1–3: Comms 60%, Envisioning 25%, Admin 15% — establish comms rhythm and approval flows; build familiarity with envisioning vision/partners; set up core systems.
Months 4–12: Comms 75%, Envisioning 15%, Admin 10% — full campaign and consultation cycle; envisioning project comms peaks around key engagement phases.

What you’ll do

Advocacy, campaigning and strategic communications (70-75%)

Run an advocacy-and-comms rhythm and maintain a steady cadence of outward-facing communications aligned to campaigns, consultations, partner moments and OLS priorities.
Own core channels, planning and publishing across our newsletter, LinkedIn, Bluesky and press office, with shared visibility and simple approval rhythms.
Support campaigns end-to-end by helping develop briefs, timelines, assets, supporter actions and coordination plans that build mandate and reduce confusion.
Shape narrative and framing that connects policy and delivery to everyday benefits such as health, fairness, thriving neighbourhoods, access, and a future-fit transport system.
Keep people-centred storytelling at the heart of communications, turning policy and delivery into stories about freedom to move, dignity, health, and everyday access.
Write and edit high-quality content for newsletters, web/blogs, social threads, decks and event collateral, and repurpose key moments into short-form assets (simple visuals, reels, short video).
Maintain a warm press list, draft releases and lines to take, and support story placement and spokesperson preparation.
Track media and social mood and support pre-bunking and myth-busting where needed

Stakeholder, community and coalition engagement - with the Campaign Director

Coordinate activity with coalition partners and aligned organisations to strengthen advocacy impact and keep shared work moving.
Play a “critical friend” role with institutions, supporting and encouraging bold change while pressing for higher ambition and stronger equity outcomes.
Co-host inclusive engagement (in-person and online), ensuring sessions are welcoming, accessible and well-run.
Support consultations by translating technical material into clear supporter-facing explainers and calls to action.

Envisioning project communications and engagement support (15-20%)

The Campaign Director leads overall programme direction. You'll support communications and engagement delivery with our project partners.

Translate project milestones into supporter-facing content and storytelling.
Support logistics for inclusive engagement events where necessary (booking, accessibility, materials).

Insight, reporting and systems

Help build lightweight ways of listening and learning, using short surveys, feedback forms, pulse checks and qualitative check-ins (with consent and accessibility in mind)
Track simple signals such as reach, engagement, sentiment and participation diversity for quarterly board snapshots.

Distributed administration (10%)

Help keep core tools running smoothly: Google Workspace, Action Network, Canva, Miro, website CMS (Squarespace/WordPress), and simple project management tools.
Support basic admin including scheduling, meeting agendas/minutes, and light finance administration (invoices/expenses tracking).

(In a small organisation, administration is distributed across the team - this recognises your contribution to keeping operations smooth.)

You’ll bring (Essential)

Advocacy/campaigning experience: you've supported or led advocacy or campaigning activity in a public-facing, values-led context (this could be in transport, climate, public health, housing, education, community organising, or similar).
Policy sense across scales: practical experience in lining up national and local policy agendas with on-the-ground realities, and communicating what that means in a place-based way.
Strategic communications strength: you can plan and maintain a comms rhythm, make good judgement calls, and keep messaging coherent across channels.
Strong writing and editing: you can craft clear, people-centred content that connects policy and delivery to everyday lived experience, and adapt tone for different audiences (supporters, partners, media, decision-makers).
Coalition and stakeholder working: you can build trust across differences and move work forward with partners, while staying clear on purpose, roles and next steps.
Campaign coordination: you can manage advocacy campaign delivery end-to-end (timelines, assets, supporter actions, coordination plans) while keeping communications coherent across multiple threads.
Autonomous delivery: you can work independently and make sound judgement calls when working solo (the Campaign Director is 2.5 days/week, so you'll often be the primary OLS person working on a given day). You keep momentum and quality high, coordinate schedules thoughtfully for shared delivery moments, and flag risks early.
Digital/tool fluency: comfortable with Google Workspace (or equivalent), Canva, an email tool (Mailchimp/Action Network or similar), a website CMS, and a simple project management tool.
Equity-minded practice: you notice who is missing and you design comms/engagement to widen participation and reduce unintended exclusion.
Interpersonal and adaptive skills: You bring emotional intelligence, self-awareness and adaptability to small-team working. You can read a room, navigate different stakeholder dynamics with care, adjust your approach when things shift, and bring genuine enthusiasm to the work even when it's complex or stretching.
Oxfordshire-based, with flexibility for occasional evenings/weekends with time off in lieu.

Helpful (Desirable)

Experience in local government / transport / climate contexts
Familiarity with systems-change approaches (for example Doughnut Economics and Positive Tipping Points concepts)
Media relations / PR coordination (or appetite to learn fast)
Short-form content creation (basic video/editing, simple graphics)

Our commitment to inclusion

Oxfordshire Liveable Streets is an inclusive, equal-opportunity employer. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and lived experiences, including those under-represented in environmental and transport sectors.

If you need any adjustments to the application or interview process, please contact us at hello@oxfordshireliveablestreets.org and we'll work with you to make it accessible.

About Oxfordshire Liveable Streets