Interested in volunteering with The Garden Statuary? Although we are not currently hiring for any additional editors or illustrators, we love hearing new ideas and are consistently open to expanding our team. Whether you have worked with us before, worked with another journal or you are brand new to undergraduate student publishing, we would love to connect.
Do you have an idea for an executive role that we have not thought of but that you would maybe be perfect for? Got a creative suggestion for how we can improve the journal? Thoughts on how we can be more innovative in terms of community building and academic excellence? We would love to hear your suggestions, critiques or comments, and are very open to expanding the executive team and creating new volunteer roles as needed. Feel free to email us thegardenstatuary@gmail.com and we can chat further!
Job Descriptions
- Illustrators: volunteering as an illustrator for The Garden Statuary is a great opportunity to work directly with authors, participate in a vibrant undergraduate arts community and have your work published in an established student journal! If you have a passion for art and community building, we would love to have you join us. Illustrators are responsible for creating one or two original works of art to accompany academic and creative writing that will be published in our winter and spring issues of the journal. The illustration process generally involves one or two rounds of revisions, working closely with the authors and our journal coordinator as part of a supportive and encouraging process. Ideal candidates are keen on providing and receiving constructive feedback, honouring both your own creative impulses and the vision of your corresponding author or authors.
- Editors: volunteering as an editor for The Garden Statuary involves reviewing and voting on content submissions for an assigned category: academic, prose, poetry or multimedia. Works that are selected for publication are then assigned two editors to annotate and make suggested edits for the author to consider. Ideal candidates are passionate about clarity, concise writing, intentionality, constructive criticism and communication, nuance and storytelling. We also value community building and respectful communication with our authors – positive feedback can be equally as important as constructive criticism.
- Marketing Coordinator: this role involves creating engaging visual and written content for our website and social media channels. Intermediate experience in graphic design is essential, but you do not need to be familiar with Adobe Creative Suite. We will provide you with Canva access and a decent selection of our design templates from previous years. We definitely love gorgeous aesthetics and witty captions, but the main purpose of this role is to connect with students, share opportunities and expand our community. The Garden Statuary is particularly active on Instagram and we are passionate about supporting other journals and student associations through cross promotion wherever possible. Overall, you would be responsible for building and maintaining a consistent look and feel that reflects the inclusive values, positive energy and academic rigour of The Garden Statuary. The marketing coordinator would recieve support and guidance from the executive team, but you would also be encouraged to experiment with engagement and hit the ground running with your own creative ideas and inspiration.
- Submissions Coordinator: this role involves recording, organizing, and anonymizing participant submissions to ensure an unbiased selection process from our editing team. The Submissions Coordinator is responsible for skimming through submitted work, removing all names and identifying information, numbering and tracking the submission in a spreadsheet, uploading the anonymous files to Google Drive for review, and emailing authors to confirm that we have received their submission. Strong organizational and time management skills, as well as familiarity using spreadsheets and any previous experience managing submissions are all invaluable qualities relevant to this position.
- Editorial Assistant: this role is a flexible position best suited for those passionate about the journal’s practices and interested in learning more about its internal workings and processes. The editorial assistant provides support for the editors and co-editors-in-chief through tasks such as executive and administrative support, launch party planning, and budgeting, with opportunities to take on auxiliary initiatives such as writing blog posts, shadowing other executive team members, or reviewing and voting on content submissions. The Editorial Assistant would ideally work closely alongside other team members to improve the journal’s internal processes and gain a more holistic understanding of its overall structure. Candidates passionate about community building, journal management, and the creative and literary arts are strongly encouraged to apply.
- Data Analyst: this role involves collating and reviewing the last fifteen years of internal and external data on the journal, and identifying trends in: submission numbers and variety of submissions per genre or category, total number of published pieces per semester and year, outgoing expenses and any other data that could be useful or actionable for the journal. The role would also involve combing through exec and team member statistics to identify how long are people staying in their roles, how many people are growing from one role into the next, and how the journal can improve knowledge transfer and ongoing consistency. The Data Analyst could also work alongside other members of the executive team to create a more robust and accurate public history of the journal to be displayed on our website.
- Archival Project Coordinator: this role involves reaching out to previous executive team members and tracking down print copies of our previous journal publications. The project coordinator would ideally seek guidance from and work alongside UBC Library to get our previous journals itemized with ISBN numbers, and create a collection that could be housed either by the UBC Library or the UBC Department of English Language and Literatures. The role would also involve creating a short project report in the form of a practical guide which could then be shared with other journals on campus through the UBC Student Journal Community of Practice. The Archival Project Coordinator would also have the option of working alongside other members of the executive team to create a more robust and accurate public history of the journal to be displayed on our website.
- Faculty Mentorship Project Coordinator: this role involves drafting a plan for possible faculty mentorship involvement in the journal and then researching and reaching out to potential faculty members from the UBC Department of English Language and Literatures and from the UBC School of Creative Writing. The Faculty Mentorship Project Coordinator would also serve as a liaison with our faculty mentors, possibly arranging editorial workshops, launch party invitations and review processes. The role would also include researching faculty service roles and time commitments to better understand and establish reasonable guidelines for involvement with the journal. This may involve connecting with staff members and Associate Chairs in the Department of English Language and Literatures. The Coordinator would also have the opportunity to connect with executive team members from other journals through the UBC Student Journal Community of Practice, and compare notes on the history of faculty involvement and mentorship in undergraduate student publishing on campus.
While we are not currently recruiting students for the above positions, we appreciate your interest in The Garden Statuary and would strongly encourage you to check back next semester or next year for any upcoming opportunities!