Community Park Quality & Co-Design Lead

Contract: 20 months, fixed term, starting March 2026
Hours: 2.5 days per week
Location: Home-based with regular travel across Bristol. Shared office space available in Bristol.

About the role

Every community deserves a park they can be proud of. Not just one that exists on a map, but one that feels safe, welcoming and cared for.

This new role sits at the heart of Bristol’s Nature Together project and is all about redefining what park quality really means. Not from behind a desk, but by working directly with communities to understand what matters most to them and turning that into practical, achievable change.

You will work alongside residents, community groups and Bristol City Council to co-create a way to define clear quality measures for local parks and translate them into realistic management plans. These plans will shape improvements on the ground and feed into the development of a Bristol-wide Quality Park Standard that can be used across the city and beyond.

This is a genuinely new role. You will help build the approach, test it, learn as you go and bring people with you.

If you enjoy working with people, navigating complexity and turning big ideas into practical action, you will feel very at home here.

What you will do

• Work with diverse communities to define what “quality” means for their local parks, making sure voices that are often excluded are actively included
• Design and facilitate workshops, surveys and conversations that help communities set priorities for their parks
• Work with Bristol City Council and local partners to turn those priorities into clear, deliverable management plans
• Build strong partnerships with council officers, community groups, volunteers and project partners
• Learn from similar work elsewhere and apply those insights locally
• Track progress against community-defined quality measures and share learning in accessible ways
• Support communities to build the skills, confidence and tools they need to keep shaping their parks beyond the life of the project

About you

You do not need to tick every box, but you should recognise yourself in most of these.

You are someone who:

• Has experience working with communities and partners in a collaborative, respectful way
• Is confident facilitating conversations with people from different backgrounds
• Understands co-design and co-production and has used these approaches in practice
• Can develop practical plans and keep projects moving forward
• Is organised, adaptable and comfortable working with some uncertainty
• Cares deeply about equality, accessibility and inclusion
• Believes parks matter and that communities should have real influence over them

Experience of monitoring, evaluation or reporting to funders is helpful but not essential.

Why work with us

You will be part of a small, ambitious charity that is rethinking the role parks play in people’s lives. We work collaboratively, value flexibility and trust people to get on with their work.

This role offers real autonomy and the chance to shape a pioneering approach to park quality that could be scaled nationally. You will be supported, listened to and given space to do meaningful, values-led work.