Commissioning a Creative Practitioner

In this section, find out about best practice for commissioning a creative practitioner in a fair and transparent way.

How do you define what you want the Creative Practitioner to do?

The best way to define what you want the creative practitioner to do is to write a brief. The brief will help you to be clear in your own mind, the objective(s) of the creative practitioner working with you – what do you want them to achieve and why?

The brief will help you clarify what sort of person you are looking for – their experience, skillset, location etc in order to meet the objectives.

The brief should give clear information to prospective applicants what they are applying for. Visit our 'What to include a creative practitioner brief' guide to see a checklist of the recommended information to include in a brief, and to see an example of a brief.

The call out should link to the brief – so that any prospective applicants have a clear understanding of what they are applying for.

The brief should later be included in the written agreement with the successful applicant, so that you and they can refer to it throughout the duration of the contract.

How do you find the creative practitioner you want?

For both transparency and to reach the widest choice of creative people with different perspectives and experiences, we recommend a public call-out. This will be based on the brief above.

Setting up a legal written agreement with the creative practitioner

Once you have selected your creative practitioner, you will need to write a legal agreement for their contract for services, covering a range of issues. Visit our 'Preparing an Agreement for a Creative Practitioner' guide to see a non-exhaustive list of items to consider before writing your agreement.

If you are member of staff, you can use the information you have gathered to help you complete a template agreement which you can access on Sharepoint here.

Once you have drafted your agreement, we strongly recommend that you pass it to the University’s Legal Team (legalservices@exeter.ac.uk ) to check it. They are very efficient and should come back to you very quickly with any feedback.

Once the draft is agreed by the Legal Team, then we recommend that you send a copy, watermarked ‘DRAFT’ to the creative practitioner, for them to comment on. In this way you can iron out any queries before presenting them with the final copy to sign. You may need to refer to the Legal Team again if there are any queries, before completing the final draft.

Please note that not all creative practitioners are familiar with the ‘paperwork’ that the University requires to be completed before they can work for you. Communication is the key – explain why a written agreement is needed, what legal requirements they need to comply with, such as health and safety, data protection, payment processes etc. It’s good to discuss this at the beginning, to avoid misunderstandings later and to iron out any queries.

The final agreement should be signed by your Director and then by the creative practitioner. You can organise signatures via the Legal Team who have an online signature process called Docusign. Copies should be kept by both you and the creative practitioner.