Visual minutes by Woven Ink
In an effort to tackle pressing challenges in evaluating arts and cultural initiatives, the QM Centre for Creative Collaboration recently brought together funders and wider stakeholders to address critical issues within the sector.
This workshop is part of the Centre's Culture, Connectedness, Evaluation project, which has evolved over the last two years to tackle the complexities of evaluating place-based impacts by creative organisations.
Throughout the workshops, attendees explored the role of universities in the wider ecosystem, considering perspectives from funders, policymakers and arts and culture organisations. We engaged in interactive sessions and discussions, exploring innovative approaches for support small-scale cultural organisations with limited evaluation capacity. Emphasis was placed on fostering collaborative partnerships between universities and local arts initiatives to find ways to gather more meaningful insights from existing place-based data, without adding additional burdens to already stretched organisations.
The groups explored pilot solutions designed to address these challenges, with proposals including establishing learning networks, building tools for streamlined data analysis, and fostering cross-sector collaborations to harness the full potential of place-based data. Everyone agreed on the importance of sustainable solutions for long-term impact, with a focus on baseline establishment, validation, and consideration of place-specific needs. It was great to have such a range of expertise across both workshops, helping to shape the next phase of the Culture, Connectedness, Evaluation project.
Joining us for the first session in May with funders were colleagues from:
The Arts Council, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Greater London Authority, The Audience Agency, The Centre for Cultural Value and freelance creative producers and policy makers from across London and the UK.
At a follow up session in June, we welcomed partners from local arts and culture organisations to Queen Mary’s Mile End campus to explore the evaluation challenges they face. In a collaborative workshop with QM academics, we looked at potential data solutions and ways that universities might act as a kind scaffold for grassroots and micro art organisations to access shared evaluation and data analysis skills.
The organisations and colleagues joining us for this second workshop were:
Magic Me, Spitalfields Music, CoMA, Artichoke, Swadhinata Trust, Mile End Community Project, People’s Palace Projects, Whitechapel Gallery and Queen Mary colleagues from schools of English & Drama, Business Management, the Wolfson Institute for Population Health and the Centre for Public Engagement.
Visual minutes capturing the conversations and ideas shared at this workshop were created by Woven Ink.