Pondering Evaluation

Do you work at a charity and have some involvement with evaluations, impact measurement or report-writing for funders? What works for you and what are the challenges?

In my role as Outreach Manager at Art in Healthcare (AiH) I constantly find myself thinking about our mission, aims and objectives, ensuring that our outreach programme stays focused and relevant to the organisation as a whole. Furthermore, I am very aware that evaluating our services and gathering feedback are key processes that we must incorporate into our daily activities as both educational and a check that our services are proving worthwhile and effective. Unsurprisingly, each round of feedback we gain comes with at least one suggestion or comment that has implications for a slight re-shape of how we do, what we do. To me this is natural development – services are only as worthwhile as they are appreciated by service-users thus organisations are responsible for regular monitoring of their service provision by means of informing this natural development.

Workshop at 'Art from Art' Exhibition, February 2013

I recently attended an event run by Evaluation Support Scotland, an organisation whose aim is ‘to make evaluation valuable, relevant and proportionate’ by supporting voluntary organisations and funders with measurement and reporting of their impact. (See http://www.evaluationsupportscotland.org.uk/ for further details). I quickly became aware that we are not alone at AiH in questioning the effectiveness of feedback forms, of wondering how best to maximise participation in feedback provision and maximising the utility of feedback, largely qualitative, once gained.

I was also especially interested to have some discussion time at the event with funders since, as a project-related fundraiser myself, I often wonder how best to ‘please’ funders with feedback reports at the end of projects, as well as ways to best sell project proposals based on feedback from previous pilot projects.

I should not have been surprised that funders are actually as conscious about their own evaluation processes almost as much as those they fund and part of the reason they often request thorough reports at the end of projects is by means of having their own source of evaluation for their own service provision. It seems everyone is therefore thinking about evaluation and about how best to capture the services they provide for passing on to others.

Art Workshop at Sunnyside Court, July 2013

Being a very visual person, I recently decided to put together a photo book including quotations and story-telling relating to our recent outreach programme at the sheltered housing block, Sunnyside Court in Morningside, run by Hanover Housing Association. To me this neatly gets across the success of our art workshops – pages of happy faces working together on a variety of creative projects, paired with inspiring quotes taken directly from participants’ feedback forms at the end of the project. For me this is evaluation, and a positive one at that, in a nutshell and is something I would gladly show funders, prospective participants and clients alike going forward. (See http://bit.ly/1gHwl79 for a PDF version of the photobook).

Meanwhile, we shall no doubt continue to develop our evaluation methods as we continue to develop our outreach programme and ensure that our services are both valued and evaluated.

Do get in touch with your thoughts on evaluations – what works for you as an organisation? How do you monitor your services and do you feel ‘in touch’ with your service users? What about funders?

Written by Amelia Calvert, Outreach Manager for Art in Healthcare

Art Workshops at Sunnyside Court

Outreach Manager for Art in Healthcare, Amelia Calvert, discusses a recent success of the outreach programme in a sheltered housing complex. 

 July and August saw the start of Art in Healthcare’s 2013/14 outreach programme, building on what went before with ‘Art from Art’ (see blog entry, http://www.artinhealthcare-scotland.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/art-in-healthcare-reaches-oout.html). This involved a five-week long series of art workshops at the sheltered housing complex, Sunnyside Court, part of Hanover Housing Association, in Morningside, culminating in an exhibition in the complex of all the artworks that had been created during the programme.

Some of the residents and artist, Emily Learmont (third from right) at the final exhibition

While the exhibition itself was clearly a hub of merriment, excitement and proud artists showing their works, it was the workshops themselves with the quiet, contented and diligent concentration of every participant that was the most memorable about this programme.

The workshops were facilitated by artist, Emily Learmont, who had run art workshops for AiH in the past, along with the help of a couple of AiH volunteers. Emily commented at the end that it was “a memorable experience” and that everyone was “hugging me goodbye!” Clearly she had had a great effect on the group with her gentle teaching manner and skill at art.

The programme came about after Edinburgh Decorative Fine Arts Society generously donated £5,000 to AiH earlier in 2013, part of which AiH decided to spend specifically on an art workshop programme in a sheltered housing complex around Edinburgh – a new venture having previously focused on workshops in Hospitals, Care Homes and care-related charities. We heard about Sunnyside Court where at least 9 residents were very interested in doing art workshop and the sheltered housing manager, Mary Riseborough, helped to develop the link and start the programme.

Mary herself took part in one of the workshops and was heard to comment, “I could just feel the happy atmosphere…[I was] totally engrossed”. At the end of the programme, she added, “The way in which they have encouraged one another has been inspirational…[and] the community spirit has been great”.

Indeed, participants seemed to highly value the experience and when asked about what they enjoyed, comments collected via feedback forms reported: “Everything…having fun”; “chance to express myself in art form”; “I didn’t think I could do it!”; “the company – really good. Keeps me going”; “doing things I’ve never done before…working with other people…very pleased with what I did”; “togetherness”; “I found it all encouraging and exciting, very stimulating and I learned a great deal about art creation”.

When asked about what went well, comments from participants included: “The group support and friendships which encouraged both the painting and creating of work and the desire not to finish the experience”; “Everyone felt they achieved something they would not have believed when they started”.

Clearly the art workshops were about more than just creativity for the participants but about the coming together with others to create, and the opportunity for them to try something new with the support of people around them.

What happens next, now that the AiH workshop series and exhibition are past? From early on in the series, the group clearly wanted to make art workshops a regular feature in the lounge of Sunnyside Court and not just as an informal get-together amongst themselves but with the added value of a visiting artist to impart knowledge, teach them new skills and further engage them in the world of visual arts. So the group are planning to apply for funding themselves, which would enable them to effectively buy a series of workshops for a longer period of time at Sunnyside Court.

Meanwhile, AiH intends to do more workshops in sheltered housing in due course, dependent on our funding, so watch this space…