LARC Evaluation Support Programme

As part of the Liverpool Thrive Programme’s support of community & cultural organisations working in North Liverpool, LARC has initiated a programme to help them develop their evaluation capacity.

This programme will assist organisations as they develop specific evaluation skills relating to participatory arts programmes. It will support them in learning new techniques for gathering data and documenting results in a way that demonstrates the contribution that cultural projects can make to achieving local (and national) regeneration priorities.

The Team
The team is being led by Francois Matarasso, an internationally recognised consultant and writer on community-based arts practice and its impact. Francois has worked for national and local government, foundations, arts organisations and international agencies in over 30 countries. The team also includes Helen Simons, a leading academic in the field of evaluation, and Rebecca Lee, an independent consultant and musician.

In addition to the main project staff, the support programme will also be supported by Gerri Moriarty, an arts development consultant and theatre director who has worked extensively in Liverpool.

The team started work in May 2009 with the programme set to be completed in December 2010. The programme has so far run various seminars on evaluation techniques, whilst providing in-depth support in small group sessions (as well as 1-1 support) with a core group of arts practitioners and organisations in Liverpool.

Wiki-Workspace
An online ‘Media-Wiki’ workspace (similar to the Wikipedia format) is currently being created that will allow the core group to upload information, create discussion topics and work together on the development and presentation of evaluation ideas and techniques.

The results from this information sharing will lead to individual evaluation toolkits for each organisation so they can confidently evaluate themselves on their work.