Evaluation reports

This page includes a mix of writing about evaluation, practical resources and some evaluation reports (where these are public documents, which is often not the case). They vary in length, and some are quite long; click on any title to download a PDF version.

2015 – Time To Think, Peer Reflection (Helix Arts). In 2014, I worked with Toby Lowe, then CEO of Helix Arts, and several artists work with the company to develop an approach to peer review. We piloted some ideas, during which everyone involved agreed that they preferred the idea of peer reflection. This paper sets out the reasoning behind the project, explains in more detail how it was done, and provides an updated version of the framework that was developed. (PDF 21 pages, 250kb)

2009 – The Human Factor, Experiences of Arts Evaluation (unpublished). This research set out to ask ‘How do people professionally involved in arts evaluation feel about their experience of it and how does their experience influence the process?’ The paper sets a context for reflecting on people’s experience of evaluating the arts by tracing the rapid emergence of this aspect of arts policy and management since the mid 1990s  and some of the resulting tensions. It then looks at people’s experience of planning, undertaking and reporting evaluation and concludes by reasserting the inseparability of people’s thinking and feeling from the theories with which they frame their professional practice. (PDF, 47 pages, 466kb)

1996 – Defining Values, Evaluating Arts Programmes (Comedia). This was my first piece of theoretical writing about the problems of evaluating arts projects and specifically people’s participation. It looks at approaches used in medicine, education and crime prevention before concluding with six principles for evaluating participatory arts projects.