evaluation – Flow Associates

Being Human Festival: 2023 Evaluation

Flow Associates were commissioned to carry out an evaluation of the 2022 Being Human Festival, building on previous years’ research by assessing the impact of the festival for humanities reasearchers, the wider public, research organisations, universities, funders and cultural partners. We have shifted the focus of evaluation away from quantitative monitoring and towards a more impact and qualitative focused model, creating recommendations enabling the festival to:

• Become sustainable by identifying and understanding their visitors, creating an offer that keeps them engaged by visiting and supporting the festival
• Continue to develop their audiences
• Build new relationships, partnerships and collaborations

The Being Human Festival seeks to make contemporary thought, ideas and experiences connected with humanities research accessible to members of the public. The festival is run by the School of Advanced Study (SAS), University of London, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the British Academy. It extends participation to universities, museums and (university) libraries across the country and is a chance for each organising body to connect with their local arts and culture provision and to reach out to members of the public of all ages to engage with them in what it means to ‘be human’.

We undertook a large scale review of festival activity including:

1. Audience survey with c.2,000 responses
2. Event organiser surveys and interviews in the UK and Australia
3. Stakeholder surveys and interviews
4. Festival team, funder and critical friend workshop after the festival to reflect on findings and set strategies for coming years

Virtual Classrooms

We were commissioned to create a robust evaluation of the Virtual Classrooms project supported by the Respond and Reimagine Grant from the Art Fund. The project set out to reach schools and young people during the COVID-19 pandemic and inform learning practice and programming going into an uncertain and increasingly digital future.

The evaluation followed the delivery of a pilot programme of Virtual Classroom sessions by History of Science Museum and Bodleian Library during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through consultation with staff and schools we mapped how it reached new audiences, increased access for under-represented groups, developed the digital capabilities of the staff and institutions and its reception in schools and colleges.

A report and presentation with a series of recommendations was delivered in order to report to the funder and to guide future iterations and delivery of remote learning sessions.

National Gallery Evaluation Framework

Flow worked with the National Gallery on a comprehensive evaluation framework to support the delivery their 2021-26 learning strategy. It aims to empower everyone to integrate evaluation into their practice, to design for more effective and impactful work across the broad range of onsite, offsite and online programmes that the Gallery delivers. We created a digital toolkit which guides staff through the why, how and when of evaluation, providing template tools and activities which can be used bespokely across their audiences.

The fresh redesign of the Evaluation Framework tackled issues with the existing processes including difficulty of use, the challenge of collecting relevant insights and the move to online delivery. We carried out extensive consultation with Learning staff in order to understand their programmes, current use of evaluation and the ambitions for their programmes. From this Flow developed an evaluation toolkit with materials and guides for collecting evaluation data which related to their strategic aims, reporting requirements and professional development.

A key focus was capturing evidence of qualitative outcomes for participants using a ‘360 degrees’ process as a way of understanding collective success as a team. The evaluation framework provided support to collect and analyse participants’ skills development, learning of new knowledge and of teir experience of the programme. For the Learning Team and wider National Gallery the framework also established metrics for understanding cultural capital and how participants can be empowered through it.

Training was provided across the Learning team and with facilitators and ongoing support given in order to refine tools as they were put into action.

Project Tag: <span>evaluation</span>

Being Human Festival: 2023 Evaluation

Virtual Classrooms

National Gallery Evaluation Framework