Job Description

Farfield Mill is an established art, craft & heritage centre in Sedbergh, Cumbria (10 miles from Kendal). We are looking for a Centre Manager who can lead, support, motivate and inspire others.

We need a resourceful, creative Manager to lead the charity and its trading arm through a new development phase.You’ll need effective communication skills to liaise with the local community as well as funding organisations and interest groups at local, regional and national level.

You will work with the Trustees and Directors to develop the organisation at a strategic level, implementing changes to generate income and secure funding.  You will oversee finances, the building and facilities and manage 15 part-time staff.

Farfield Mill is a unique restored woollen mill with two exhibition galleries, heritage displays, a retail area and café and provides studio and workshop space for 18 resident artists and artisans.  Whilst remaining faithful to our charitable objects we must also seek new ways to maximise our assets and develop commercial opportunities.

You will need to be a flexible, dynamic, well organised and ready for a new challenge. 

Farfield Mill is at the heart of a community of trustees, staff, tenants, members, friends, volunteers and members of the local community who have enjoyed and supported Farfield Mill through its first twenty-five years.

We provide an excellent exhibition venue in the Yorkshire Dales supporting the arts and traditional and contemporary craft and reflect the Mill’s heritage through the work of artisan weavers and a mechanized wool weaving operation. 

Farfield Mill is the only place in the Park where you can see and feel how the industrial revolution grew up in rural areas, transforming the life of the small rural towns in the Pennines like Sedbergh.

We started the Farfield Mill project with a public meeting on 17 November 1992.  Our purpose was to preserve the building, which was one of the most important historic woollen mills in West Yorkshire. By the end of the century we had managed to become the owners of the building and to raise sufficient funds to restore the lower three floors, the top floor was finished later.  We opened as a visitor centre in 2001 and as we approach our 25th anniversary the Mill is now home to a thriving community of craft businesses, including weavers, artists, quilters, jewellers, and felt makers  The mill has a café, a weaving operation, a heritage floor presenting the history of the mill and of the culture of wool going back centuries in this part of Yorkshire, 3 exhibition galleries, a shop, and an area where volunteer weavers, lace makers and rag- ruggers regularly demonstrate these traditional skills to our visitors.

Farfield Mill is at the heart of a community of trustees, staff, tenants, members, friends, volunteers and members of the local community who have enjoyed and supported Farfield Mill through its first twenty-five years.

We provide an excellent exhibition venue in the Yorkshire Dales supporting the arts and traditional and contemporary craft and reflect the Mill’s heritage through the work of artisan weavers and a mechanized wool weaving operation. 

Farfield Mill is the only place in the Park where you can see and feel how the industrial revolution grew up in rural areas, transforming the life of the small rural towns in the Pennines like Sedbergh.

We started the Farfield Mill project with a public meeting on 17 November 1992.  Our purpose was to preserve the building, which was one of the most important historic woollen mills in West Yorkshire. By the end of the century we had managed to become the owners of the building and to raise sufficient funds to restore the lower three floors, the top floor was finished later.  We opened as a visitor centre in 2001 and as we approach our 25th anniversary the Mill is now home to a thriving community of craft businesses, including weavers, artists, quilters, jewellers, and felt makers  The mill has a café, a weaving operation, a heritage floor presenting the history of the mill and of the culture of wool going back centuries in this part of Yorkshire, 3 exhibition galleries, a shop, and an area where volunteer weavers, lace makers and rag- ruggers regularly demonstrate these traditional skills to our visitors.