General Manager

Life in Vacant Spaces Trust:

Life in Vacant Spaces is a Trust (charitable status pending), established in June 2012 to help Gap Filler, Greening the Rubble, CCC and others enable the huge outpouring of vacant space ideas from the community. Our mission is to tap into the creative energy of Christchurch and enable hundreds of temporary activations of vacant sites and buildings to bring joy, optimism, opportunity and community leadership to the recovery of the city.

LIVS knows that Christchurch people and organisations have the ideas and ability to generate new artistic, cultural, educational, recreational, environmental and commercial uses for vacant spaces. We believe that helping people to use vacant spaces will create dynamism, vibrancy and inspiration within our city to enrich our recovery journey and the nature of the city we are co-creating together.

The role of LIVS is to do the background work that lowers the barriers and risks for temporary and longer term uses of vacant spaces: we broker access to vacant spaces, provide resources to help projects flourish, ensure that property owners are not inconvenienced, provide the public liability insurance, prepare the legal documents and champion the power of the community to lead our recovery and urban revitalisation.

General Manager Role Description:

The General Manager is the driving force of LIVS. Responsible for building relationships to broker access to vacant spaces, engaging corporate partners and inspiring community-led projects, the General Manager will be a passionate advocate for community leadership in urban regeneration.

The General Manager will be the primary ‘face’ of the Trust, liaise with the Trustees and manage the Trust’s funds. Success in the role will be measured by the impact of community projects in vacant spaces: while the number of projects is important, the most important outcome is that projects bring delight, optimism, opportunity and community leadership to the recovery of Christchurch.

Key skills

Resourcefulness, determination, ingenuity and integrity, communication skills, diplomatic, self-assured, project management skills, public speaking, budgeting, organisation