In the new season of the Centre for Cultural Value’s Reflecting Value podcast, we’re checking in with the cultural sector about our co-created Evaluation Principles.

Each season of Reflecting Value offers people in the cultural sector the opportunity to reflect on the impact of their work and the changes we can make to the wider sector.

In season three of the podcast, Reflecting Value: Evaluation Principles in Practice, we’re inviting our guests to reflect on evaluation, share practical advice and signpost helpful tools.

We’ll be releasing new episodes of the podcast weekly throughout July 2023. You can listen to our first episode, exploring the Evaluation Principle empathy, now.

Listen to S3 Ep1

What are the Evaluation Principles?

In 2021, the Centre for Cultural Value responded to growing, industry-wide demand for support with evaluation. The result was the Evaluation Principles – a collection of critical ideas that guide cultural sector workers through the process of evaluation. 

With the input of over forty representatives across the sector, we set out to provide a “best practice” framework for learning and reflecting in evaluation – one that could benefit people working in a variety of different roles across the sector.

What does this new season cover?

It’s been two years since we first launched the Evaluation Principles. We wanted to talk to sector professionals about how they have informed their work.

For Reflecting Value: Evaluation Principles in Practice, we decided to focus on the friction that comes with evaluation and ways in which the Evaluation Principles can be used to find practical solutions to barriers in learning.

Across this new season, we will discuss three of the Evaluation Principles in depth, exploring areas of evaluation that can be difficult to carry out:

• Episode 1 – Empathy: How can we be more understanding, avoiding extraction and self-promotion? How can we center the experiences of our participants, not just in our activity but also in our evaluation?
• Episode 2 – Proportionality: How can we scale our evaluation to account for our time and resources? When should we step away from an evaluation? Should we do less – and will that make our work better?
• Episode 3 – Rigour: What methods should we use in our evaluation? How do we make sure we’re staying grounded in these methods – and building trust in them? How do we bring participant voices into an analytical evaluation approach?

This three-episode season of Reflecting Value brings together guests from across the cultural sector. In keeping with the co-creative nature of the Evaluation Principles, we talked to a wide variety of sector professionals, including professional consultants, first-time evaluators, researchers, funders and artists.

You can listen to Reflecting Value via our website, on Spotify, Apple Music or wherever you find your podcasts. Please consider rating, reviewing and subscribing.