Project Tag: <span>training</span>

Tate Artist Rooms

Tate commissioned us develop a framework and supporting toolkit with resources to capture the impact of the new form of Artist Rooms. This framework will enable a better understanding of audiences, thedevelopmental impact on the touring exhibition for partners and provide Tate with insights to further develop this new model of packaged touring exhibitions.

The Evaluation Framework enabled Tate to:

  • Define and capture evidence of change, giving them a deeper understanding of their impact
  • Gather evidence of successes and challenges, enabling them and their partners to learn and grow the programme
  • Provide materials to champion their work and advocate for their touring programmes
  • Deliver high quality evidenced reports to funders and stakeholders
  • Empower their Learning team to share their insights with partners and peers

This framework and methodology underpinned the key ambitions for Artist Rooms in enabling access to collections nationally. It supported exploring how working in partnership can enhance access to international artists, particularly for younger people.

Flow provided:

  • Planning how it can be integrated and delivered by the Artist Rooms team into the package of resources provided to support partner venues
  • Understanding current evaluation and any barriers to effective collection and analysis
  • Creating a simple and useable toolkit for staff who are collecting evidence and requiring simple methods for analysing it
  • Advising on how evidence collection can be integrated into visits to the exhibition, related programming and use of supporting resources
  • Delivering training sessions with staff on using the framework and its tools
  • Making recommendations for future evaluation plans

Turner Contemporary Emerging Producers

Flow Associates were commissioned in 2021 to evaluate Turner Contemporary’s Emerging Producer project, following the progress of 8 Emerging Producers as they worked together towards an exhibit in 2023, responding to the 1953 short documentary film “O’Dreamland!”. This project focuses on the experience and development of the Emerging Producers, and explored what this could mean for future projects run by Turner Contemporary. Flow led the group in exploring experience design for their exhibition, “Oh, Dreamland!”, running workshops and acting as critical friends during its development.

The Emerging Producers were a group of eight young people recruited in Autumn 2021 by Turner Contemporary to lead on the development and delivery of their summer exhibition opening in 2023. They were recruited via an open call for young people aged 18 to 25 living and/or studying in Kent. This co-creation project would provide an opportunity to gain experience of working in the arts sector, building their CVs while working alongside filmmakers, artists, and exhibition makers. The call stressed that no previous experience was necessary, just a desire to ‘collaborate, get creative and commit to the programme’. Crucially this was a paid position, allowing the Emerging Producers to integrate the part time position with other work, study and life commitments, and all eight Emerging Producers were involved until the end of the project. The group met weekly on a Thursday morning, and additional hours for research or taking part in other events was paid at the hourly rate of £9.30, which increased part way through in line with the gallery’s commitment to paying living wage.

At the start of the second year the core focus for the project shifted and some of the final stated outputs (i.e. to co-create a major exhibition, and create a toolkit of best practice for running co-creation activity) gave way to an outcomes-driven process of collaborative working where the group were able to take on production roles to deliver Salamagundy ’22 a variety show at Dreamland featuring a range of local acts; and to co-create Oh! Dreamland, an immersive exhibit running alongside an artist-led exhibition in Turner Contemporary’s Clore Learning Studio. This was run alongside Mark Lecky’s, “In the Offing“, activating the exhibition for younger audiences by curating a social and fun space for them within the gallery.

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.