BASTA Arts & Community Education Outreach Specialist

BASTA (Building and Strengthening Tenant Action) is a project housed in Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA) dedicated to helping Austin renters work alongside their neighbors to improve conditions in their homes and communities. In response to longstanding community frustration over substandard housing and landlord impunity, BASTA engages underrepresented tenants through outreach and education into a housing justice movement that seeks to dismantle the systems that prevent tenants from living in dignified and healthy homes.

BASTA achieves its mission through its teams: the BASTA Outreach Team (BOT), which forms tenants associations at multifamily properties in Austin and builds BASTA’s base; the BASTA Education & Arts Advocacy Team (BEAT), which engages allies to creatively educate Austin renters and the broader Austin community; the BASTA Citywide Advocacy and Policy team, which develops project-wide campaign priorities, trains our base on housing justice issues, and ensures that tenants are not left out of policy conversations; and the BASTA Legal Advocacy Team, which represents individual tenants and tenant organizations, and provides legal guidance to the other teams.

Position Description

The BASTA Arts & Community Education Outreach Specialist position will engage deeply with community members to advance BASTA’s goals as part of BASTA’s Education and Arts Advocacy Team (BEAT). The Outreach Specialist will support the development of programs that bring together Austin renters to use different art mediums to explore housing justice and support other arts-based projects at BASTA. Additionally, they will connect with tenants in interactive and creative ways to make sometimes hard-to-understand tenants rights information accessible and digestible. Alongside another Outreach Specialist they will support BASTA’s frontline community education and outreach efforts targeting tenants and the larger Austin community through a wide range of activities, including field outreach; skits and workshops; and telephonic and virtual methods.

The ideal candidate is creative, collaborative, and curious; recognizes that joy, experimentation, and collective learning are essential elements of effective community engagement; and embraces blank canvases by asking questions, listening intently, and taking the initiative to create something new.

Responsibilities:

• Community Engagement and Arts Advocacy

  • Develop and hold events for tenants to creatively explore housing justice topics utilizing mediums such as drawing, painting, theatre, and general crafting.

  • Organize events to connect with BASTA allies in conversations around housing justice and BASTA’s tenant-led work using arts as a vehicle for engagement.

  • Support communications campaigns by contributing to the production of newsletter, social media, or video content.

  • Foster and maintain relationships with potential allies in the arts community

  • Work with tenants to document and record stories related to their experiences renting in Austin such as housing instability, evictions, junk fees, bullying managers, and their work with tenants associations.

• Community Education:

  • Create and develop props, video scripts, skits, educational games, and other engaging materials to support workshops, presentations, and tenant outreach events.

  • Co-lead tenants rights workshops and presentations at partner organizations and other community institutions alongside team members.

  • Conduct field outreach at properties and tabling at community partner locations and highly trafficked areas (such as bus stops, HEB parking lots, etc).

  • Help identify community education needs, drawing on outreach experience to tenants

  • Support the development of accessible community education print and digital materials in collaboration with the BASTA Legal Team.

  • Assist team in maintaining the existing community education materials library, including helping to edit, update, or translate materials to ensure that they are accessible across language, literacy, and education levels.

  • Help maintain and expand a community resource guide of available supports, including legal aid, rental assistance, and basic needs resources.

• Contribute to team efforts in providing tenants facing eviction with information about their eviction rights and connecting them to resources through our Eviction Notification System through field outreach, calls, texts, and emails.

• Support volunteer activities, including monthly call clinics and flyering events.

• Contemporaneously document all outreach activities to track outcomes and ensure compliance with funding requirements.

• All other duties assigned.

Required Qualifications

• Commitment to social, economic, racial and language justice;
• Previous experience in video production and/or social media content creation.
• Experience or background in performing, visual, or graphic arts;
• Previous outreach or community engagement experience;
• Excellent communication skills in English and Spanish;
• Ability to communicate complex concepts in plain language;
• Proficiency with Google Docs, Sheets and Slides or Microsoft equivalents;
• Strong organizational skills;
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team;
• Ability to work evenings and weekends; and
• Vehicle and driver’s license.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Proficiency in additional languages often spoken or used by tenants in Austin (ie., Arabic, Vietnamese, Pashto, Burmese, ASL);
• Experience with community education and popular education techniques;
• Knowledge of housing issues and/or landlord-tenant law;
• Experience with working in multilingual spaces;
• Experience designing effective flyers and print materials with knowledge of Canva a plus; and
• Familiarity with Salesforce, Slack, Miro, Hustle, and Toggl.