Strategy – Flow Associates

University of Cambridge Museums Environmental and Sustainability Evaluation Framework

The University of Cambridge Museums (UCM) group commissioned Flow to develop a strategic initiative, the UCM Environment and Sustainability Evaluation Framework. This framework, launched in July 2025, represents a proactive commitment to systematically embedding and evaluating sustainable practices across all UCM activities, including collections management, facilties, exhibitions and public engagement. It signifies a fundamental shift in approach, moving beyond isolated “sustainability” projects to integrate environmental responsibility into the core operations and public engagement of the entire UCM collection group.

The framework is designed to empower UCM to effectively fulfill its environmental responsibilities, identify opportunities for positive impact, and make informed, evidence-based decisions towards achieving its sustainability goals within the broader context of the Earth Crisis. By providing a structured, cyclical approach to planning, evidence collection, reflection, and reporting, the framework ensures continuous improvement and accountability in UCM’s environmental stewardship. This comprehensive integration of sustainability across all functions, rather than limiting it to designated “green” projects, underscores a mature and deeply embedded organizational commitment, positioning UCM for more effective and enduring progress towards its environmental objectives.

Foundational Principles: The Dual Approach to Impact

At the core of the UCM framework is a dual approach to environmental responsibility, conceptualized as achieving a “Lighter Footprint” while cultivating a “Stronger Handprint”. The “Lighter Footprint” focuses on minimizing direct environmental harm from UCM’s operations. This involves tangible actions such as embedding sustainable materials and energy sources into new buildings, with progress often measured through numerical targets. Complementing this, the “Stronger Handprint” emphasizes the broader, positive influence UCM can exert by engaging, exciting, and inspiring people to take action. Cultural institutions like museums and gardens are uniquely positioned to foster learning and behavioral change, leveraging innovative thinking and outward communication to achieve wider societal good. Many initiatives will naturally encompass elements of both footprint reduction and handprint expansion. This strategic emphasis on the “Handprint” signifies a progression from merely mitigating negative impacts to actively generating positive societal and environmental change, recognizing the powerful role museums can play as agents of transformation in the face of global environmental challenges.

To guide its public-facing activities, the framework adopts five core UCM Environmental Outcomes for People. These outcomes are adapted from Flow Associates’ Generic Environmental Outcomes (Flow GEOs), which are themselves rooted in the widely utilized Generic Learning Outcomes (GLOs) framework prevalent in the museum sector. This adaptation ensures that the evaluation criteria are directly relevant to UCM’s unique public engagement activities, allowing for precise measurement of impact on attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors related to environmental responsibility. This localized tailoring enhances the framework’s practical utility and effectiveness in achieving UCM’s specific mission.

The five outcomes are:

Enjoyment, Connection and Curiosity: Fostering engagement and discovery through UCM spaces.
Environmental Attitudes and Values: Inspiring personal motivation and care for the Earth.
Knowledge in Environmental Topics: Increasing awareness and understanding of human, natural, political, and creative responses to environmental issues.
Green Skills for the Future: Developing practical life skills and foundational knowledge for environmental careers.
Activity and Progression for Environmental Change: Enabling active citizenship and community well-being through environmental action.

The framework also promotes an ongoing, cyclical approach to evaluation, integrating environmental responsibility into all aspects of UCM’s work. This iterative process involves continuous planning, evidence collection, reflection, and learning to strengthen future initiatives. This philosophical grounding in both measurable operational improvements and the broader, qualitative impact on human behavior and community engagement underscores the unique role of cultural institutions in fostering environmental stewardship.

Empowering Action: The Framework’s Core Tools

The UCM framework provides a comprehensive suite of five practical tools designed to support its cyclical evaluation process and embed environmental responsibility across all activities. A key strength in the design of these tools is their integration with existing UCM and University frameworks, such as the UCM Evaluation Framework, the University’s Planning for Impact tool, and the Local Environmental Sustainability Plan (LESP). This intentional avoidance of creating additional administrative burdens significantly enhances the likelihood of staff adoption and consistent application, addressing a common challenge in implementing new organizational policies. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) form a common language between faculties and iniatives within the university and and such, these were used to map the impacts of activity to enable staff to easily connect with wider institutional work. The inclusion of both quantitative and qualitative tools further indicates a robust mixed-methods approach to evaluation, capturing both measurable outcomes and deeper insights into behavioral changes and operational challenges.

Environmental Sustainability Checklists: Simple checklists for collections management, conservation, planning activities, exhibitions, events, or programs.
UCM’s Planning for Impact Tool: Building on the Univsersity of Cambridge’s PER tools with considersations of environmental responsibility.
Evaluating Environmental Outcomes for People: A menu of standardized questions categorized under the five UCM Environmental Outcomes for People.
Awareness and Action Audit: A quantitative survey assessing individuals’ awareness and activity in key environmental sustainability areas.
Reflection Prompts

Flow provided a rollout plan for embedding the framework, delivering workshops with staff to lead on piloting and advocacy. The framework is also designed for iterative refinement, recognising that environmental challenges are dynamic, building in mechanisms for continuous learning, refinement, and adaptation. This allows the framework to evolve with new insights, technologies, and changing environmental contexts, ensuring its long-term relevance and effectiveness.

How is art/ tech work reaching the public?

Collusion asked Flow Associates to undertake research into the current context of practice, commissioning and accessing art/tech works, and make this short report available for others to use. Flow spoke with venues, commissioners and artists to get a sense of the state of play and where and how R&D support is working or throwing up barriers for a thriving area of practice.

Read the report here

What do we mean by art/tech? Artwork, any artform, where technology is used in a practice led way to create experiences for the public. We are interested in physical work that the public needs to engage with in a particular location. We are excluding purely digital work that is experienced on the internet only. Artworks in this field can take a wide variety of forms, lengths and locations: from traditional venues to outdoor works and festivals, 10 minutes to an hour or more, using technology subtly or more substantially.

The pipeline for making practice-led art/tech work is broken, if indeed it ever existed. Alongside access to a range of expertise and resources, the cost of living crisis and subsequent hypercompetition for funding has led us to a situation where creativity, innovation and production is stifled by the lack of access to funding, whether application led or venue commissioned.

Further, where traditional commissioning is taking place for art/tech work, the ‘deliver this as a finished piece by X’ is failing to account for the iterative nature of art/tech work that requires more R&D and audience testing over a longer period of time to reach a truly finished state. As an emerging sector, when compared with a traditional sector such as dance or visual arts, there also appears not to be a strong shared understanding of who the key players and networks are in this field, with an apparent lack of connection and collaboration.

BRIT Transforms Revue

Flow were commissioned by The BRIT school to conduct research with their alumni to uncover and articulate the long-term impact of the school on the creative and cultural sector.

Through workshops with staff and analysis of qualitative responses from over 800 past students we identified key themes and outcomes. Our insights provided the backbone of a publication and campaign launched in 2021.

This publication was used as an advocacy document to support further funding and a celebration event shared its story with key funders and alumni.

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 framework was informed by consultation with staff members across all teams of the Learning Department, exploring their future plans including the 5 year strategy, reviewing previous evaluation processes to find out what the current barriers to effectieve evaluation were and designing new tools and approaches to solve them.

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.

Southbank Centre: Art By Post

We at Flow Associates were commissioned by Southbank Centre to create a robust evaluation report of Phase 1 and 2 of the Art by Post project to reflect on this responsive programming and understand opportunities for developing it in the future. The project reached 4500 participants monthly with more than 600 artworks being submitted by artists across the UK.

Art by Post is a nationwide outreach scheme devised and delivered by the Southbank Centre in response to the pandemic, enabling a continuation of community and wellbeing programmes during and beyond the extended closure of the building. It is more than just a replacement for on-site and local activity, however, as it is creating opportunities for SC to build relationships with arts and care organisations across the UK and to innovate in the design of remote and distributed creative activity for people without digital access.

The programming consists mainly of booklets designed by artists and inspired by Southbank Centre’s art collection and artistic programme. The activities are designed for adults living with one or more long- term health conditions, who through COVID-19 restrictions are at further risk of isolation. SC is especially interested in giving people living with dementia, and their supporters, access to creative resources. The project also aimed to reach those without digital technology at home.

People who sign up to take part are guided through a series of activities which aim to spark the imagination, keep minds active and help people stay connected to others. Along with the booklet participants were given a freepost envelope to return their artwork to Southbank Centre, in the hope that an exhibition could be created once the site reopened after the COVID-19 lockdowns.

V&A Learning Restructure

We worked with senior staff at the V&A Museum to support them through a restructure and the creation of a new division for Learning and Interpretation. We ran workshops using ‘Appreciative Enquiry’ methods to reflect on their goals, motivations, relationships and working methods. This was followed by complementary work with other audience-facing teams in the V&A.

Our clients say: “I approached Flow as they have a highly professional and creative approach to the work that they do. A great piece of work which contributes to the success of the V&A Future Plan.” Head of Training and Development, V&A

Project Type: Strategy