Roz Hall is a socially engaged arts practitioner, a photographer who has undertaken independent evaluations for many years, starting with her work with young people in digital media projects (Hall, 2005). Conventional evaluation approaches can be lacking if they do not attempt to understand the meaning of arts participation to people taking part. Participatory Action … More
Qualitative data include information gathered about participants’ experiences, perspectives and opinions. They can help to understand the meaning of arts activities and processes to participants. They can reveal important subjective information as well as illuminating the process of project delivery, showing unintended consequences of projects that cannot be identified through measurement using pre defined categories. … More
This paper gives a brief introduction to the issues and techniques used for assessing value, including economic evaluation and social return on investment.
Even the smallest scale project evaluation involves some kind of monitoring. The purpose of this is to document project delivery, usually recording the numbers taking part, the settings where the activities took place, the types of activity offered, and the outputs from the activity, including creative outputs such as artworks, music and performance. This often … More
Perhaps the most important and extensive part of any evaluation is the work undertaken before any data are gathered.
It can be challenging to make time and resources available for evaluation, which can sometimes seem costly in relation to the overall project costs. However, it is increasingly important to factor in evaluation costs when planning projects, particularly if these are envisaged as having a role to play in supporting health and wellbeing or meeting … More
Good practice can be demonstrated in relation to each stage of the evaluation cycle (Daykin et al. 2013). Although there are no agreed codes of practice or ethics for evaluators, as there are for researchers, some key principles emerged from the Creative and Credible Project.
Support for third sector organisations to develop capacity for evaluation from Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
Examples of Creative Evaluation Techniques.
This toolkit details a selection of creative techniques that practitioners can use to enable participants to engage in understanding and share their feelings and opinions in a reflective manner. It gives guidance on how the material gained through creative techniques can be used to prove the value of our work.
