What a super day!  2 years in the making (don’t ask) and then yesterday I met up with 15 of the region’s keenest and we had a splendid day mucking about with outcomes frameworks, logic chains, question banks and love them/loathe them survey tools.

The fulfilment of a private ambition really – West Midlands Museum Development team had invited me to devise and deliver an Evaluation Training Day at the Hereford Museum of Cider.

My ambition for the day was to provide museum professionals with an overview of how to plan for and structure an evaluation programme that is embedded in project activity from start to finish. All were encouraged to base the ‘hypothetical’ planning work on live projects in their own organisations.

I took the group through the planning process from formative enquiry, carrying out monitoring and transitional assessment research through to summative evaluation and reporting.

Yes, it was as nerdy as it sounds but we had enormous fun and there was a great buzz in the room as people worked together to share their knowledge and experience and banish their fears of EVALUATION.  It’s a beast, but the course feedback suggests I’ve helped people to tame it!

We also

• created our own evaluation framework and question banks
• considered the levels of resource (money, time, staffing, training) required to carry out evaluation work
• discussed the pros and cons of various approaches to monitoring and survey
• finished with a good natured debate over whether to tackle the work in-house or commission an external consultant for the job.

As I said, it was fun with information attached.  Actually, we were having so much noisy fun that a member of the Cider Museum team asked what kind of party we were having and could he join in!

Keep reading below the picture for links to evaluation guidance and resources…

Here are some of links to information and tools we talked about in the session which might well be of use to you, my darling readers.

What types of evaluation are there? Here’s a handy guide from the V&A Learning Team to some of the terms used by consultants!

National Lottery Heritage Fund:

• Introduction to their outcomes framework, describing the difference they want you to make
• Evaluation Guidance, describing what they want you to tell them about how your project has made a difference
• RF Associates, 2019.  Heritage Grants: A Review of the Self-Evaluations and Outcomes of 326 completed projects funded during Strategic Plan 3

Arts Council England:

• Five Goals for Arts and Culture, describes the difference ACE want their funding and support to make
• Arts Council National Lottery Grants: Evaluation Guidance

Measuring Learning

• ACE: Using the Generic Learning Outcomes to measure learning impact

Association for Independent Museums (AIM): measuring economic, social and environmental impact

• Evaluating Economic Value Toolkit
• Evidencing Social & Environmental Value of Museum Toolkit

Measuring Wellbeing

• new economics foundation (nef), Five Ways to Wellbeing
• UCL Museum Wellbeing Measures Toolkit
• Measuring Wellbeing with the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale

Head Heart Bag Bin (pdf) – a visual survey tool for evaluating the learning and wellbeing impact of your activity