Brand, Content & Community Manager

Position: Brand, Content & Community Manager

Location: Forest of Dean, U.K., with regular time in London and occasional international travel

Start: As soon as possible

Job Summary:

We are looking for someone unusual to join Alf Studios and help shape the way we tell our story over the coming years.

Alf Studios is a family-run violin-making atelier built around the work of Gregg T. Alf, whose career has now spanned nearly five decades. As a new generation becomes increasingly involved in the studio, we are beginning to think more deliberately about how the work, people and ideas surrounding it are communicated.

This is not quite a conventional social-media or marketing role.

We are looking for someone with a natural instinct for stories, people, images and ideas — someone who can become genuinely immersed in the life of the studio, notice what is interesting or beautiful, and find thoughtful ways to share it with the outside world.

The role will span our Instagram, Facebook and RedNote presence, as well as our website and newsletter, with room to develop longer-form projects including interviews, films and potentially a podcast.

One day might involve photographing a visiting musician or documenting an instrument as it develops in the workshop. Another might involve interviewing Gregg, writing a newsletter, planning a series about tonewood, coordinating a photographer, travelling to an exhibition, or simply noticing a story unfolding around the studio and finding the right way to tell it.

At its heart, the role is about building a community around the work - and around the values that give the work meaning.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop the long-term voice, visual identity and communications strategy of Alf Studios

• Create and coordinate content across Instagram, Facebook and RedNote

• Develop and manage our newsletter and broader editorial calendar

• Contribute to and help maintain the Alf Studios website

• Photograph, film, write and edit stories from the workshop and wider studio community

• Document visiting musicians, commissions, performances, exhibitions and special projects

• Develop relationships with musicians, makers, writers, photographers and other collaborators

• Coordinate outside photographers, filmmakers, designers and other creatives where appropriate

• Help build a coherent archive of photographs, films, interviews and stories around Gregg’s work

• Experiment with longer-form storytelling, including films, interviews and potentially a podcast

• Travel periodically with the studio to concerts, exhibitions and other events

• Help develop an engaged international community around Gregg Alf and Alf Studios

Candidate Requirements:

We are deliberately not looking for one narrowly defined professional background.

The right person will probably be:

• Naturally curious about people and stories

• Visually sensitive, with strong aesthetic judgement

• A confident writer and communicator

• Comfortable taking photographs and video, or motivated to become very good at doing so

• Able to develop an idea independently and carry it through to completion

• Warm, thoughtful and comfortable spending time around musicians, craftspeople and visitors

• Highly organised enough to manage an editorial calendar while remaining responsive to spontaneous opportunities

• Comfortable using social platforms, digital tools and content-management systems

• Interested in learning new creative skills as the role develops

• Independent, adaptable and happy working within a small family business

• Fluent in English, both spoken and written

• Legally able to work in the UK

Experience in photography, filmmaking, writing, journalism, graphic design, social media, communications or the arts would all be valuable, but none is individually essential.

Mandarin language skills would be a significant advantage as we develop our presence in China, but are not required.

The Ideal Background:

You might be a photographer, writer, filmmaker, designer, musician, journalist or communications professional.

Or you may come from somewhere less obvious.

What matters most to us is a combination of curiosity, taste, initiative and emotional intelligence.

We are particularly interested in someone drawn to the wider world surrounding the work: music, craftsmanship, apprenticeship, tradition, beauty, landscape, philosophy, attention and the relationship between inner life and creative practice.

There is a contemplative dimension to violin making that is easy to overlook. It is slow work. It requires patience, listening, repetition, judgement and an unusual quality of attention. Music itself can also be understood in this way — not simply as performance, but as practice; not simply as expression, but as a way of listening more closely.

We would like the studio’s communications to make room for those questions.

Not every story needs to sell an instrument. Some may be about a piece of wood that has waited a century to be used. Some may be about the silence of a workshop before the day begins. Some may be about a musician’s relationship with a single sound, or what fifty years of making has taught someone about patience, beauty or failure.

We are looking for someone who finds those things genuinely interesting, and who can communicate them without making them sentimental or abstract.

Life at Alf Studios:

Unlike our Sales & Relationships role, this position is intended to be live-in.

The successful candidate will be based within our wider community at the Rectory in the Forest of Dean, where part of Alf Studios’ work now takes place.

That is an important part of the role.

We do not want someone trying to understand the studio entirely from behind a laptop or through occasional visits. We would like the person doing this work to become familiar with its actual rhythms — the mornings in the workshop, the arrival of musicians, meals and conversations, periods of intense making, travel, quiet stretches, and the gradual development of an instrument over months.

For the right person, we hope this can be more than simply a place to work.

There is space here for a slower and more attentive way of living: close to craft, music, countryside and a small community of people who care deeply about what they make. Someone drawn to reading, walking, music, contemplative practice, traditional arts or simply a life with a little more depth and less noise may find the environment particularly rewarding.

At the same time, this is still a professional role with real responsibility. The contemplative quality of the place should support good work, not replace it.

There will also be regular time in London and occasional travel in the UK and internationally.

You would work closely with Gregg, Leo and the wider Alf Studios team, but would have considerable freedom to develop ideas, projects and a creative direction of your own.

Working at Alf Studios:

Alf Studios is an international violin-making studio centred around the work of Gregg T. Alf, one of the most recognised contemporary violin makers of his generation.

We are still a small, personal organisation, and this role will have a meaningful influence on how the studio presents itself over the next several years.

We are interested in what happens when an old craft continues to evolve without losing the depth of attention that made it valuable in the first place.

For us, violin making sits somewhere between craft, music, science and philosophy. It is concerned with measurable things — wood, arching, vibration, acoustics — but also with qualities that are much harder to quantify: judgement, intuition, memory, beauty and the relationship between a player and an object made by hand.

We are looking for someone who would find it exciting to live close to those questions and help communicate them to others.

Someone who wants not simply to manage a set of channels, but to help shape the next chapter of the studio’s public and cultural life.

Remuneration:

Competitive salary depending on experience. Live-in accommodation forms part of the structure of the role. Further details can be discussed with the right candidate.

Application Process:

To apply, please click on this link and tell us a little about yourself, your work and why this role interests you.

Formal qualifications matter less to us than seeing how you think, what you notice, what you care about and what you have made.

For any enquiries, feel free to contact us at violins@alfstudios.com