Centre for Cultural Value

How should we evaluate? Co-creating cultural evaluation principles
2020-11-09 14:00 - 15:30 UTC | Online
How should we evaluate?
**Waiting list only**
Join us for an interactive workshop facilitated by artist Paula Varjack and feed your ideas into the co-creation of a set of evaluation principles that could underpin the evaluation of cultural projects in the future.
Dr Beatriz Garcia from the University of Liverpool and Oliver Mantell from The Audience Agency are leading this work to co-develop a set of principles drawing on the ideas and expertise of a wide range of practitioners.
They’ll present their work in progress, and invite you to share your ideas, suggest models and tools, and contribute to the development of an evaluation principles wiki.

Young people and mental health: shaping our research
2020-11-06 14:00 - 15:30
Mental wellbeing makes headlines every day, with an estimated one in ten children and young people in the UK living with a mental health diagnosis.
**Waiting list only**
With Covid-19 creating an environment for heightened loneliness and isolation, there’s a need for a stronger focus on the mental health of young people.
The Centre for Cultural Value is currently developing a research digest which centres on the question: what is the value of cultural experiences for young people’s mental health, wellbeing and resilience? Our role is to review and summarise existing research and to share these summary findings in an accessible digest, to help inform future practice and policy.
Join us for an interactive workshop where we share the introductory stages of our research in this area and invite you to feed in your ideas to the development of this research review, so we can tailor the digest to be as useful as possible to the sector and policymakers.
Some areas of cultural practice focusing on mental health have strong evidence-based research demonstrating strengths, whereas other areas have been under-researched. Led by artist and facilitator Viv Gordon, you’ll help shape the research digest and collectively identify the strengths, challenges and knowledge gaps in practice and research in the sector.
Also participating in the discussion are Dr Robyn Dowlen, Centre for Cultural Value who is writing the research digest, Dr Kat Taylor from Greater Manchester’s Arts and Mental Health Innovation programme, Kevin Edward Turner, dancer and co-artistic director of Company Chameleon and Errol Francis, CEO at Culture&.
This event is also part of Beyond Measure, a collaboration between the Leeds Arts Health and Wellbeing Network, Cultural Institute and Centre for Cultural Value. Beyond Measure is a programme of digital engagement exploring research and evidence in culture and health.

Who and what is evaluation for? And when is it useful?
2020-11-05 14:00 - 15:30
Why do we evaluate our work and who do we do it for?
Is it to meet the expectations of funders and stakeholders or to assess a project’s success and capture the difference it makes? Are we missing a trick if we don’t use evaluation as an opportunity to enhance our practice and deepen our learning and critical reflection skills? When is evaluation useful and when should we not do it?
Join us to discuss and question evaluation in the cultural sector and explore how we might be able to do and share it better, so collectively we can articulate the difference culture makes to people and to society.
Led by Anne Torreggiani, the Centre Co-Director and CEO of The Audience Agency, we’re also joined by artist Grace Ndiritu, who works collaboratively with museums across Europe, Hilary Jennings from the The Happy Museum Project that looks at how the museum sector can respond to the challenge of creating a more sustainable future, Holly Donagh, Director of Strategic Learning, Insight and Influence at Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Harpreet Kaur, consultant and project manager at Xtrax and Chris Batsford. The session is introduced by Beatriz Garcia from the University of Liverpool.

What does cultural participation look like with and post Covid-19?
2020-11-04 14:00 - 15:30
How do you create opportunities for cultural participation in communities through a global pandemic?
**Waiting list only**
We’ve been entertained and engaged during lockdown, as cultural organisations and creative practitioners have created an impressive array of rapid responses during the ongoing pandemic to try and keep us connected to their work and to each other.
As a society, we have learnt to adapt to the current environment, initially mindful that it was ‘short term’. But as new lockdowns roll on and off across the country…what happens next and how do you create opportunities for cultural participation in communities through a global pandemic?
Chaired by academic researcher Dave O’Brien, join our contributors to hear what they have learnt during this time and how they might have done things differently, so we can gain insights into how we can help understand cultural value in the future.
The line-up includes Zulfiqar Ahmed, an expert in community-led development and now progressing, in the midst of coronavirus, the 10-year £3.5m Bradford Creative People and Places project The Leap; Amerah Saleh, General Manager of youth organisation Beatfreeks, whose recent Take The Temperature report focused on the impact of coronavirus on young people; Nisha Tandon OBE, director of ArtsEkta, who has created cultural activity packs and an online Mela in Belfast, and Sarah Clarke, Learning & Participation Manager at the National Civil War Centre, who are creating activity boxes for schools with genuine and replica artefacts.

Culture on referral: sharing our findings
2020-11-04 11:00 - 12:30
There’s a growing belief that there is an important role for the arts and culture in supporting people’s health and wellbeing.
The Centre for Cultural Value has published its first research digest, exploring the evidence surrounding culture on referral (or arts on prescription) programmes.
Dr Robyn Dowlen from the Centre for Cultural Value presents the findings from this recent  review of research into culture on referral, sharing what we can be certain of, where there is emerging evidence and where future research is required to strengthen the evidence base.
Take part in a discussion chaired by Alex Coulter, Director of Arts and Health South West with invited contributors, Gavin Clayton, CEO at Hoot Creative Arts, Christiana Melam, CEO at National Association of Link Workers, Helen Chatterjee, Professor of Biology at UCL, and Emily Bradfield, Director at Arts & Minds, to debate the findings, whilst gaining an insight into the learning and critical reflections around the key themes of the digest.
This event is also part of Beyond Measure, a collaboration between the Leeds Arts Health and Wellbeing Network, Cultural Institute and Centre for Cultural Value. Beyond Measure is a programme of digital engagement exploring research and evidence in culture and health.

Collaborate – building research partnerships for cultural value
2020-11-03 14:00 - 15:30
How do you know the cultural value of your work?
**Waiting list only**
Join us to discuss what value research can bring to your creative practice and find out how the Centre for Cultural Value can support you to develop your own research project.
This workshop is for people working in cultural sector organisations or individual practitioners in the UK. It isn’t suitable for researchers, students or international guests.
Led by Lisa Baxter, The Experience Business, with Becky Parnell, Manchester Camerata and Liz Harrop, Centre for Cultural Value this interactive workshop will provide insights into the benefits of engaging in research and an opportunity to shape the Centre for Cultural Value’s Collaborate programme, which will launch in early 2021, supporting collaborative research projects responding to sector-driven questions and artist-led curiosity.

Whose cultural values?
2020-11-02 14:00 - 15:30
Does everyone place a value on culture and if so, do they value it in the same way?
**Waiting list only**
And do people get the opportunity to engage in what they value most?
Whilst many argue that art, heritage and culture define what it means to be human, it doesn’t mean that we all share the same idea of what culture is, or how it plays a role in our lives.
We’ve brought together contributors whose work is reshaping cultural value in the UK, including Tobi Kyeremateng, whose initiative Black Ticket Project gives young Black people free access to the theatre, artist and activist Harry Josephine Giles, who is currently producing a disabled artists’ manifesto ‘imagining a crip future’, Rabab Ghazoul, director of Gentle/Radical, a cultural and community organisation in Cardiff working hyper-locally from a basis of social and healing justice, and Dadirai Tsopo of Hard Times Require Furious Dancing and Wales House Farm Big Local, whose work focuses on ‘enabling voices from the grassroots a place to be heard’. Chaired by Eleonora Belfiore of Loughborough University.
Together they will discuss the headline ideas of cultural value and cultural engagement in the UK and how we can see and move beyond them. How can we step outside the established norm and reshape what cultural value looks like? Audience participation encouraged!
