Evaluation needs to be planned and managed in the same way as any other project, with attention to budget, resources, timeline and milestones throughout. In this section we show how to develop an evaluation plan that will describe the evaluation approach and how it will be undertaken.
The evaluation cycle offers an overarching framework to understand evaluation as an iterative process. It was developed by Willis Newson with researchers at the University of the West of England (Daykin et al. 2013) to guide practitioners.
Creative and arts based approaches can be particularly powerful, especially at the data collection and dissemination phases of the evaluation cycle.
Case studies are often presented in arts and health evaluation. They are used to highlight participants’ stories of the impact of arts projects. A well written case study can powerfully convey the impacts of an arts project.
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
