Evaluation Principles Archives - Centre for Cultural Value https://www.culturalvalue.org.uk/tag/evaluation-principles/ Centre for Cultural Value Fri, 06 Sep 2024 13:50:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://www.culturalvalue.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/favicon.png Evaluation Principles Archives - Centre for Cultural Value https://www.culturalvalue.org.uk/tag/evaluation-principles/ 32 32 Evaluation for Arts, Culture and Heritage: Principles and Practice https://www.culturalvalue.org.uk/evaluation-arts-culture-heritage-online-course/ Wed, 05 Jul 2023 13:18:08 +0000 https://www.culturalvalue.org.uk/?page_id=6365 The post Evaluation for Arts, Culture and Heritage: Principles and Practice appeared first on Centre for Cultural Value.

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Online evaluation training for
arts, culture and heritage professionals

Our free-to-access online course will help you understand the principles and master the practice of carrying out evaluation in the arts, culture and heritage sector.

All course content is available now via the FutureLearn website. Start at any time. Register now to start learning.

Register for the course

Together with the University of Leeds, we have developed a free-to-access online course:

Evaluation for Arts, Culture and Heritage: Principles and Practice.

This self-guided course offers the opportunity to hear from experts, develop new approaches and build your evaluation skills and confidence.

All course content is available via the FutureLearn online learning platform. Head to the FutureLearn website to register and gain full free access to the course for two weeks. Start at any time. 

Who is this evaluation skills course for?

  • Arts, culture and heritage sector professionals, managers and practitioners keen to learn more about the fundamentals of robust evaluation practice
  • Cultural sector senior leaders and board members
  • Freelance artists and practitioners
  • Early career arts and heritage sector professionals
  • Early career funders and policymakers
  • Students and academics interested in cultural management
Three people sat at a table with laptops and notebooks, laughing together

How long is the evaluation skills course?

All learners can access Evaluation for Arts, Culture and Heritage: Principles and Practice via the FutureLearn online platform. Completing all six modules should take eight hours of study time.

The course content can be neatly divided across two weeks (four hours per week), allowing you to complete the course across FutureLearn’s two-week free-to-access period.

Want to take a little longer? Opting to upgrade or choosing FutureLearn’s subscription package allows you to study at your own pace, as and when you have the time.

What will I learn?

In Week One, you will focus on identifying the role, value and everyday challenges of evaluation in the cultural sector while exploring the principles and frameworks underpinning effective evaluation.

In Week Two, you will learn more about creative evaluation methods, develop an evaluation plan and identify how your organisation can continue to learn from evaluation.

Two people using a digital touch screen together in a museum
Person in red top, wearing glasses working at a computer

How much does it cost?

You can access the course for free for two weeks by creating an account on the FutureLearn website. During this time, you will be able to download all related resources.

Learners can upgrade the course to access additional benefits, including unlimited access to the course and a certificate upon completion. Learners can choose to upgrade and either pay a one-off fee to access this one course or opt to subscribe to FutureLearn, paying a monthly fee to access all eligible courses and learn at their own pace (cancel anytime).

What are learners saying about the course?

Red background with orange block design at the top. The text is a quote from a cultural practitioner who has done the course. It reads: “Absolute gamechanger of a course … This course has absolutely changed my thinking around evaluation and the power it has.”
Red background with orange block design at the top. The text is a quote from a cultural consultant who has done the course. It reads: “A very practical, straightforward and enriching course … It was flexible enough to fit in around other projects but in-depth enough to not just be a box-ticking exercise.”
Red background with orange block design at the top. The text is a quote from a local authority policymaker who has done the course. It reads: “I’m really excited to put what I learnt to use in my next project.”

Read more user reviews on FutureLearn.

Ready to find out more?

Discover more about Evaluation for Arts, Culture and Heritage: Principles and Practice and register for the course on the FutureLearn website.

You can also watch this video recording of the reflective workshop, which took place in autumn 2023. We invited participants to hear more about why we made the course, how its learning can be implemented and where we can be creative in our evaluation work.

How can we make evaluation more meaningful? Take a look at the Evaluation Principles which can help to ground and guide evaluation practice.

Register for the course
Watch workshop video
Explore Evaluation Principles

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]]> FailSpace https://www.culturalvalue.org.uk/our-work/failspace/ Thu, 01 Dec 2022 16:03:05 +0000 https://www.culturalvalue.org.uk/?page_id=5486 The post FailSpace appeared first on Centre for Cultural Value.

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FailSpace

Success and failure often co-exist, but the stories we tell about cultural projects and policies frequently focus on narratives of success while the failures remain hidden.

These tools from FailSpace will help you to talk about and learn from failures.

Explore FailSpace
Illustration by Lucy Wright

Introduction

How can the cultural sector better recognise and learn from failures?

This FailSpace research from two of our Associate Directors, shows that learning from failures needs to be an integral part of creating, delivering and evaluating cultural projects and policies.

It connects closely with our co-created Evaluation Principles, which highlight the importance of learning over monitoring and understanding rather than judging. FailSpace underscores that the purpose of this learning and understanding must be to change practice.

FailSpace has developed a series of tools to help you to critically reflect on your practice, either individually or in a team.

Whether you have thirty minutes or a full day to reflect on your work, these tools will get you and your stakeholders talking productively about failures and what needs to change as a result of them.

Tools

Illustrated creatures on a beach
Illustration by Lucy Wright

FailSpace toolkit

This toolkit will help you to talk about and learn from failure.
Illustration of a flying toad wearing headphones attached to a green parachute.
Illustration by Lucy Wright

The findings

A deep dive into our findings on failures in cultural participation and a framework to help you critically reflect on your work.
An illustration of a penguin bending down to talk to a mouse. the mouse says " It wasn't all that great"
Illustration by Lucy Wright

The picture book

'Welcome to the Cultural Desert' is a graphic story about the successes we hear talked about and the failures we don’t.
Facets of failure
Illustration by Lucy Wright

Facets of failure

Explore the five facets of failure – process, purpose, practice, participation and profile.
Wheel showing five facets of failure and the six degrees of success and failure
Illustration by Lucy Wright

The wheel of failure

This tool will help you to reflect on a specific project and define to what degree it has been a success or a failure.

Films

In these short films, we unpack the thinking behind FailSpace, and take you through a step-by-step guide to using the FailSpace tools.

Project summary

About FailSpace

FailSpace was led by Professor Leila Jancovich and Professor David Stevenson, both Associate Directors of the Centre for Cultural Value. It was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and took place over three years.

The project’s starting point is that cultural participation projects and policies are frequently lauded as successes. However there is little acknowledgement about what didn’t work and formal evaluation processes rarely include reflection on any failures and negative outcomes. And if we don’t talk about failures, how do we learn?

Prioritising narratives of success is often a result of a lack of honesty between participants, artists, cultural organisations and funders. Fuelled by a fear of losing funding and future work, this approach can limit risk-taking, learning and positive change towards a more equitable cultural sector.

The FailSpace team talked about failures to hundreds of policymakers, arts practitioners and participants through interviews, workshops and surveys.

They used what they learned to create a series of useful tools to help you hold honest and open conversations about failures between colleagues, artists, funders, participants, and board members.

When people say we need to be allowed to fail, I think that’s ridiculous. You know, it’s not hard. Everyone’s allowed to fail: the point is to learn from it.” Funder

Research team

Professor Leila Jancovich

Leila is Professor of Cultural Policy and Participation at the University of Leeds and Director of Research and Innovation in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries. She is an Associate Director of the Centre for Cultural Value.

Professor David Stevenson, 

David is Dean of the School of Arts, Social Sciences and Management at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh and a Professor of Arts Management and Cultural Policy. He is also an Associate Director of the Centre for Cultural Value.

Dr Lucy Wright

Lucy is an artist with a PhD from the Manchester School of Art. Lucy conceived and illustrated the The FailSpace picture book, Welcome to the Cultural Desert.

Dr Malaika Cunningham

Malaika is a theatre practitioner, founder of The Bare Company and is based at artsadmin as an Artist/Researcher. She has a PhD from the University of Leeds.

Lizzie Ridley

Lizzie has worked in communications and audience research in the cultural sector for many years. She is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Leeds.

Related resources

Child wearing virtual reality headset looking upwards.
Photo: Giu Vicente on Unsplash

Evaluation Principles

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Mafwa Theatre. Family Flourish Day. Photo by Tom Arber.

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Making Data Work In 2024/2025, the Centre for Cultural Value led a national research project to develop a blueprint for ...

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]]> Reflecting Value https://www.culturalvalue.org.uk/reflecting-value/ Mon, 22 Mar 2021 12:59:21 +0000 https://www.culturalvalue.org.uk/?page_id=2107 The post Reflecting Value appeared first on Centre for Cultural Value.

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Reflecting Value

Reflecting Value is a podcast where we ask big questions about cultural value in a reflective space.

Check out our brand new season, Evaluation Principles in Practice.

Reflecting Value is available via this page, on Spotify, Apple Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

Whose Future – Rising Arts Agency. Photo: Shamphat

What is Reflecting Value?

Our podcast series Reflecting Value shares the successes and challenges of communicating cultural value, bringing together a range of thought-provoking contributors for discussion and reflection.

Each season focuses on a different strand of our work and research. You can find every episode of the podcast, including our new season Evaluation Principles in Practice, below.

Announcing Season 3

It’s been two years since we launched our co-created Evaluation Principles – so we wanted to check in.

The third season of our podcast, Reflecting Value: Evaluation Principles in Practice, features three new episodes exploring the ways cultural sector professionals have applied the Evaluation Principles.

We discuss how the Principles can be used across the cultural sector in practical and beneficial ways.  We also talk to our guests about the challenges of evaluation.

You can listen to Reflecting Value via the links below, on Spotify, Apple Music or wherever you find your podcasts. We’d love you to rate, review and subscribe.

Season 3 – Evaluation Principles in Practice

In the cultural sector, it’s often difficult to find space for evaluation.  

Finding the time to plan a successful evaluation can be challenging. And sometimes, we lack the resources and learning tools to really make an effective difference to our work. 

How do we make evaluation meaningful? How can we identify the right questions to ask, and the most crucial information to capture? How can we give the people who feed into our evaluations valuable experiences – and the space to express themselves? 

In our third season of Reflecting Value, we explore these questions. We take a look at our co-created Evaluation Principles, and use them to think about areas of evaluation that can be elusive and hard to implement.

Be sure to subscribe to get all upcoming podcast straight into your feed.

S3 Ep 1: Empathy

This episode explores the ‘empathy’ principle and the role of listening in evaluation.

S3 Ep 2: Proportionality

This episode explores the ‘proportionality’ principle and how we can understand our limits as evaluators.

S3 Ep 3: Rigour

This episode explores the ‘rigour’ principle and how we can identify the right methods for our evaluation.

S3 Ep 4: Transparency

We return to season three to discuss the ‘transparency’ principle and how we can be more open about evaluation.

Build your evaluation skills

Interested in learning more about evaluation and how you can use the Evaluation Principles in your work? 

Together with the University of Leeds, we are launching a new, free-to-access online course: Evaluation for Arts, Culture and Heritage: Principles and Practice. 

This self-guided course offers the opportunity to hear from experts, develop new approaches and build your evaluation skills and confidence. Find out more about the course, launching in September 2023, below.

Find out more about the course
Photo Credit: Students in Waterside Cafe (by Susannah Ireland)

Season 2 (2022)

In the second season of Reflecting Value, we talked to people working at the intersections of cultural participation – including researchers, practitioners, cultural curators and participants.

Our host Robyn Dowlen talked to our guests about how far the cultural sector has come in its work around participation – and how far it still has to go.

S2 Ep 1: The digital (r)evolution?
 

S2 Ep 1: The digital (r)evolution?

This episode explores the different ways that cultural organisations and practitioners use the digital to engage with audiences. We explore ...
Banner for Reflecting Value podcast Season 2 Episode 2 (Who holds the power?), displaying the headshots of 5 guests.
 

S2 Ep 2: Who holds the power?

This episode explores the power dynamics that underpin cultural participation and research. We discuss how where you live can impact ...
Banner for Reflecting Value podcast Season 2 Episode 3 (Gaming as culture), displaying the headshots of 3 guests
 

S2 Ep 3: Gaming as Culture

This episode explores the cultural experiences people have through playing video and board games. We talk to experts about the ...
S2 Ep 4: Learning through crisis
 

S2 Ep 4: Learning through crisis

This episode of the Reflecting Value podcast is hosted by Anna Woolf from London Arts Health Forum. Daniel Regan and ...
S2 Ep5: Physically distanced, socially connected
 

S2 Ep5: Physically distanced, socially connected

This episode of the Reflecting Value podcast is hosted by Lewis Hetherington of National Theatre of Scotland. He brings together ...

Season 1 (2021)

In the first season of Reflecting Value, we explored themes that emerged from our research into culture, health and wellbeing.

Across four episodes, we discussed how the cultural sector identifies and conveys its value to the health and social care sector.

Ep 4: From where we stand
 

Ep 4: From where we stand

Hosted by Emily Zobel-Marshall in conversation with five Leeds-based cultural leaders, this episode explores the health and wellbeing of the ...
Ep 3: Whose safe spaces?
 

Ep 3: Whose safe spaces?

What barriers to access are we creating when we bring culture, health and research together? And how do we enable ...
Ep 2: Making room for one another
 

Ep 2: Making room for one another

In the second episode of Reflecting Value we focus on the specific role of culture in addressing health and wellbeing ...
Ep 1: Bringing two worlds together
 

Ep 1: Bringing two worlds together

The first episode of Reflecting Value explores the ways in which the cultural sector is conveying its value to the ...

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