Design Mentor

Background   
 
Turquoise Mountain is a non-profit organisation established in 2006 to revive traditional crafts, historic areas and to provide jobs, skills and opportunity through cultural heritage projects. By blending heritage buildings, education and enterprise, Turquoise Mountain has created sustainable heritage places and livelihoods that support the revival of artisan industries. Turquoise Mountain now works in Afghanistan, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, and the Levant. Since 2006, Turquoise Mountain has restored over 150 historic buildings, created employment for thousands of artisans and builders, built over 50 small businesses, and supported and generated over $17 million in sales of traditional crafts to domestic and international markets.   

Turquoise Mountain Levant works in Jordan, Palestine, and the wider region to support cultural heritage. We connect hundreds of artisans to new and sustainable markets, provide training and education in traditional crafts and lead sustainable regeneration projects of historic buildings. 

This Role  

This full-time role with our team in Palestine is for a trained product designer or fashion designer to design, implement, and follow-up on Turquoise Mountain’s Design Training and Mentorship programmes. The Design Mentor will run three programmes with Turquoise Mountain: design internships, design mentorship, and design training. The Design Mentor will have full responsibility for these programmes including outreach and selection of artisans to participate in our programmes, design of the programmes, and implementation of the programmes. Through these programmes you will work in collaboration with groups of artisans in different crafts (including embroidery, leather, stone, glass, mother-of-pearl, and others) to design and produce new pieces or collections, provide mentorship to help them in developing their own products further, and provide training in the core concepts of design. You will work closely with our Product Design Team, Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Team and Project Management Team across all projects and offer your support to other teams where design support is needed.  

Responsibilities  

• Design, set-up, implementation, and follow up of Turquoise Mountain’s design trainings, internship, and mentorship programmes.  

• Develop training curricula, schedules, outlines, and learning materials for several design programmes based on the needs of the mentors and apprentices.  

• Outreach (with support from the communication and enterprise and entrepreneurship teams), selection, and needs assessment for artisans and designers for each programme based on their experience, competencies and gaps in their knowledge and skills. 

• Design of structured design training and design mentorship programmes for artisans and designers based on their technical and design knowledge, to help them to strengthen their design understanding, approach, and products.  

• Lead the implementation of these programmes as the key design trainer and mentor with the support of the Design and Production Team, Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Team, and in certain circumstances specialist consultants if needed.  

• Lead the development of new collections and product lines based on research and sampling with groups of artisans and designers that are part of mentorship programmes – developing innovative new concepts, approaches, and designs with them. Where required by the Product Design and Sales Team, the Design Mentor will follow TM’s brand identity and guidelines in the development of the products. The Design Mentor will document their research and concept development process.  

• Contribute to mini-training sessions and training days in Turquoise Mountain’s Design Studio/Craft Hub in Bethlehem, including showing guests and participants how to use design softwares, design tools, and materials.  

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• Minimum of three years of professional experience in the product design, fashion design, craft product design, or other relevant fields; 

• The ability to understand and conceive of technical drawings; 

• Knowledge of AutoCad and rendering programs is preferred (but not required);  

• A university degree in design or a design related field;  

• Solid experience of as a design trainer, mentor, teacher or lecturer; 

• Prior design involvement with artisans in craft is essential; 

• Good command of spoken and written English and Arabic languages; 

• Excellent interpersonal and communication competencies; 

• Ability to identify competencies gaps in design; 

• Ability to work under pressure; 

• Ability to travel to Bethlehem, and other Palestinian cities as needed to visit the artisans’ and designers’ workshops;  

• Solid knowledge of the craft ecosystem in Palestine. 

Location  

• This role will be based in Bethlehem, with travel needed to other key Palestinian cities.  

• This application is open to all individuals specialized in conducting similar assignments.  

• Please submit the following in PDF format to [email protected] (the email subject line should be “Design Mentor”  

• CV / Resumé  

• Portfolio of existing design work  

• A cover letter (maximum 300 words) 

Submission Deadline: 1st November 2024