Communications Specialist

POSITION: Communications Officer (32–40 hours per week)

DEPARTMENT: Communications Department
LOCATION: Huis de Pinto and de Waag, Amsterdam
REPORTS TO: Head of Communications

What will you be doing?
Your responsibilities:

• You will help promote Waag’s mission and have the freedom to create various types of content;
• You will write engaging and inspiring articles about Waag projects and topics related to culture and education (for example, for the website, blogs, or letters to the editor);
• You will promote events that contribute to the various research projects;
• You will produce reports on your communication activities in collaboration with national and international research partners, such as museums, universities, and makerspaces;
• You maintain a network of journalists who write about education and the cultural sector.

Take a chance as an employer

• A fluent and error-free command of Dutch and English;
• Proven experience in developing and implementing multimedia communication strategies (social media campaigns, communication plans, blogs, promotional copy for events, newsletters);
• Able to work under pressure and switch between different projects and clients.
• Your future colleague Ouarda talks about working at Waag: “The freedom the organization gives me to shape my own projects really suits me. My colleagues appreciate me, I can be myself, and that makes it a great place to work.”

• Waag is an organization that offers plenty of opportunities for personal growth and a training budget
• Waag offers a casual work environment and a good pension plan
• The work locations are Huis De Pinto and De Waag, in the center of Amsterdam
• The salary range for this position is $2,550 to $3,250 per month (based on a 40-hour workweek), depending on knowledge and experience
• Diversity is crucial to making technology and society more open, fair, and inclusive. That is why we encourage candidates from diverse cultural backgrounds to apply. Even if you feel you don’t meet all the requirements, we still encourage you to apply. Some qualities can’t be captured in bullet points.
• The application deadline is June 15, 2022. If you have any questions about this job opening, please contact Gijs Boerwinkel at gijs@waag.org (06-34286279).
• Recruitment agencies are asked to refrain from contacting us regarding this job opening.

You will coordinate and carry out marketing and communication activities for projects focused on culture and education. For example, you might contribute to a project examining the role that artificial intelligence in “smart” toys plays in children’s upbringing. Or the “Maakplaats 021” project, where children from all over Amsterdam learn to use and experiment with new technology at libraries in their neighborhoods. In other words: thanks to you, Waag’s target groups benefit from the valuable insights generated by these research projects. Of course, you won’t be doing all of this entirely on your own, but as part of Waag’s communications team. With a designer, web editor, program creator, and producer, among others, you’ll have great colleagues on the communications team who think outside the box and with whom you can bounce ideas off.

For more than 25 years, Waag Futurelab has been researching how technology can be used to drive social innovation. Well-known Waag projects include Fairphone, the world’s most sustainable smartphone, and De Digitale Stad, one of the very first social media platforms in the Netherlands. Or consider Operation Sigismund, one of the first educational games in the Netherlands that lets students experience how exciting an archive can be and is still played weekly at the Drents Archief.

Waag Futurelab is a cultural organization located in the heart of Amsterdam. It operates at the intersection of society, art, and technology. Its program addresses pressing social issues, which are translated into concrete projects. These projects are highly diverse and are always carried out in collaboration with partners from Amsterdam, across the Netherlands, and around the world. Waag was one of the pioneers of the digital society, in which the perspective of citizenship and the role of the arts and creativity have always played a central role. Waag is a foundation where approximately 50 employees work in teams. The organization has an open work culture and strives to be a reflection of society.