DATA DRIVEN DECISIONS

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June is a busy month for our team as it is when we make all the data-driven decisions for the National Portfolio Organisations (NPO) funded by the Arts Council.

We offer an affordable service to help organisations collect all the data they need during the year for the Arts Council. We also help them import it into the funder’s portal, which opens between April and June. Whilst we are then  assembling all of the data, ready to fill in the portal, we analyse and report on all the data for the organisations, to enable them to make data-driven decisions. This is when we bring the data to life. Our data-driven decisions take the form of a team presentation followed by a report. We share trends shown over time, outputs, audience information and artist voices. We anonymise and share any staff issues and also provide staff and board demographic profiles. We look at ideas and spaces where organisations could shout about the great work they are doing (or do more of) alongside ways to improve. Some include practical operational tips to make sure organisations are using their limited resources and limited staffing in the best possible way, i.e. the most efficient way. The beauty of these presentations is that they are data-led and we don’t know what we will find until we analyse the information.

What is an NPO? The Arts Council explains “National Portfolio Organisations are leaders in their areas, with a collective responsibility to protect and develop our national arts and cultural ecology. Public investment brings public accountability, for us and for the organisations we invest in, and this is reflected in our expectations.”

Organisations do have to be accountable in terms of detailed data. It can be quite tricky to understand the requirements too, for example, in 2024/2025 there have been a lot of changes, with the launch of a new system for one part of data collection, called ‘Illuminate.’

The Evaluator has been offering this service for a number of years, and our NPO cohort has grown significantly since 2023. We love working with arts organisations to make sure we figure it out for them. The Arts Council is keen for organisations to use their own data more, so it’s a win-win relationship.

Are you  an NPO organisation who has recently been through a challenging time in finding data, assembling the right information and putting all your data into the portal when it opened? If so then why not give us a call? We might be able to help you and it is much better value than you might expect. In fact, our packages have a standard cost of £2,400 plus VAT each year. You can call us on 01756 532 538 or email info@theevaluator.co.uk

If you are interested in this idea but are not quite sure you want to talk yet, then why not join our mailing list?

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We only mail out about 3 newsletters per year, so you definitely won’t feel bombarded, but it is a great way to keep in touch and learn about our approach to evaluation and data in general.

VISIT IN PERSON: WE INVENTED THE WEEKEND

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We were lucky enough to be invited to evaluate the ‘We Invented the Weekend’ festival at Salford Quays in June 2024. The festival is busy! It attracts thousands of visitors and has; performances, tents, music, shopping, sports, boats, cyclists, dancers, parades, talks – you name it and it is probably taking place across the site. Evaluating something like this requires a lot of energy and luckily The Evaluator has been honing its festival approach for many years now. We don’t often get to work next to celebrities like Bluey and Supertato though! Not forgetting the Gladiators and Mr Motivator!

You can read more about the We Invented The Weekend festival here.

four colourful textiles with the letters W I T W in a grid

We worked with an amazing team of volunteers and two giant dice to collect feedback at the weekend festival. We are very proud to say that across two sites, with a really small evaluation team, we were able to collect almost 500 completed feedback surveys during the weekend itself. We also created a brand-new game which worked really well, involving a giant dice and questions which aligned to the dice roll. This means that we have really good results across a wide cross section of people, great sample sizes and very good data.

 

photogragh of Salford Quays which shows tall buildings and blue skies next to water with people walking

Whilst there, we also carried out extensive footfall counting, to allow us to create a robust estimate of footfall over the whole weekend.

Our surveys are still live for this project and we are looking forward to collecting and analysing all the data over the summer months.

You might spot us at the next couple of festivals we are working on; these are ‘The Festival of Culture’ in Nelson in June and also ‘The National Festival of Making’ in July.

You can see more about The Festival of Culture here, and you can see more about The National Festival of Making here.

We actually evaluate the number of festivals and are happy to come along and support data collection if needed. Our festival analysis includes audience profiles, quality measures, practical experience and ways to improve, alongside footfall and economic impact. We would be happy to have a chat if you have a festival, that you would like to know more about, evaluating. You can call us on 01756 532 538 or email: info@theevaluator.co.uk

Pendle Business Award Finalist

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The Evaluator is delighted to be a finalist in the 2024 Pendle Business Awards for the category Social Responsibility.

 

Graphic is black with white text saying we are proud to be a 2024 finalist

We take our social responsibility very seriously, championing inclusion and diversity for example. We always work hard to make sure that all the projects and activities we evaluate include as many people as possible.

We also work on a lot of environmental projects and are a sustainable team. We minimise commuting by working from home, expect for once a week office days. Our director’s commute is walking to walk! We avoid single use plastic, and hardly use any consumables as a business.

We are a philanthropic team, our director, Kirsty, volunteers for her local secondary school as the school’s strategic careers lead, and our people specialist, Bronwen is also a trained hedgehog rescuer!

We are an ethical organisation, where we make decisions as a team. We even have an ethical query resolution process which is worked through step by step.

And, last but absolutely not least, we are passionate about wellbeing. We delivered the groundbreaking wellbeing project, ‘72 Seasons’ in 2020. This involved getting more than 300 people to rewrite the seasons with us to create an agreed set of nature seasons, to help people connect more with nature as it sits on their doorstep. Since then we continue to share the seasons online and the community of seasonal seekers has now grown to almost 2,000 people. You can see more about the 72 Seasons project here. 

This is all in addition to our operational activity which looks at social responsibility day in and day out! We are delighted to be finalists along with two other amazing organisations; Domiciliary Home Care Services and VS Group. 

New Client: Hurst Farm

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The Evaluator is delighted to be working with a new client, Hurst Farm.

Based in the Darbyshire Dales, this project is funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. The project has a focus on improving the natural assets of the Hurst Farm woodland and will connect together the known heritage features for the benefit of local communities within easy access of the estate. The proposed activities will help to improve opportunities for inclusion, promote well-being and begin to offer an improvement of the life chances for those people actively engaged through the Hurst Farm Heritage Trail.

We are also delighted to be working in partnership to evaluate this project with Simon Lees from Countryside Training Partnership. This is the third time we have pooled skills to work together and it’s always a good fit. We enjoy working with other consultants and also enjoy how the conversations and multi-disciplinary approaches mean we can be creative, as well as  offering a really wide range of experiences to project challenges.

This funded project is part of a bigger suite of projects, and you can read more about them here. Hurst Farm Projects.

You can see more about Hurst Farm on this link.

 

New client: We Invented the Weekend

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The Evaluator is delighted to be working with a new client, We Invented the Weekend. You can see more about them on this link. 

We Invented the Weekend is ‘The festival of free time’ and we are looking forward to working together at this high profile and exciting event. The festival is taking place on Saturday 15 & Sunday 16 June and is happening at Media City and Salford Quays. There is an amazing line up including live music, family fun, wellness workshops and sports activities – all for free!

Thousands of people will be making their way there, and we’ll be on hand during the festival with a team of volunteers to understand their experiences. This will include audience profiles, demographic segmentation, economic impact, quality of experience and more. We will be providing a full festival evaluation.

The Evaluator Values 

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At The Evaluator, we have always had a clear idea of what we do and why we do it. In 2024, we have clearly defined that with a statement of values.

The values represent who we are at heart, and what we do for our clients, as well as underpinning all of our work.

What are business values?

Business values are described as the core principles and standards that guide a company’s actions, decisions, and behaviours. They represent what a company stands for and are essential in shaping its culture, brand identity, and strategic direction. These values influence how a company interacts with its employees, clients, funders, and the community in general.

By clearly defining and consistently using values, organisations can create a strong, positive culture and a sustainable competitive advantage.

The Evaluator Business Values

 

Image of the evaluator ruler branding and the words creatively simple honest and useful

Our values are shown on the image above and are; Honest, Useful and Creatively Simple.

Core Value for The Evaluator: Honest

Honesty matters to us. When decisions are to be made about data – people need to feel that the results are honest. We need to be honest about how we have collected data – what questions did we ask, and where did we ask them. We are by nature, honest people, who say the truth, and that is the secret to our success. Honesty builds trust, and our clients know we will tell the truth. That means funders can trust our impartial evaluation too, and that has many benefits for our clients when it comes to applying for funding in the future.

Core Value for The Evaluator: Useful

What we are really passionate about is getting our clients to use data to make decisions! We want people to be inspired and enthusiastic about data, and what it can do for organisations. That means, we spend a lot of time focussing on what data people need and how they can use it. We train clients and the organisations we work with on how to collect the correct data, and how to understand the data. We often collect data for people too. What is essential to this value (usefulness), is that we collect the right amount of data which we can use. We do not collect large amounts of data that is stored and never looked at. We collect the right amount of data, which is often less than people expect, and use what we have collected. The secret to powerful data is about how it is analysed and used, not how much of it there is!

Core Value for The Evaluator: Creatively Simple

Data can be complex. We spend a lot of time and energy making it creatively simple for people to work with us. Examples of creatively simple ways to collect data are things like – sticker boards, marbles, hula hoops and giant dice. These have all featured in our work! There can also be creatively simple ways to demonstrate complex results and personal experiences to clients. This is a value that we are always working on in order to improve.

Why did we choose these values?

Founder and Director, Kirsty Rose Parker, explains “We have been working hard behind the scenes on articulating what it is that makes us stand out. Sharing our core values is the first step of this. We have looked carefully at all the steps that make up an evaluation with us. From listening to people at the beginning, to being creative with our methods at evaluation design time. We regularly challenge ourselves on how to be simpler, how to be more creative and also on how our work can be honest and useful. These values are now an everyday part of The Evaluator – helping us to grow as a team, whilst retaining our quality service and products.”

Why do values matter in evaluation?

These are our values, but we also often include client’s values in the evaluations we plan. We have helped clients decide what values work for new projects in the past, and then used those values to form the materials we create for clients. Having a short and memorable set of values is a great way to give new teams a frame of reference for their work. We look forward to a value-driven future creating great partnerships and measuring even more values.

 

If you are interested in measuring your values or helping to define them, then please get in touch on info@theevaluator.co.uk or call 01756 532 538 to book an informal discussion.

If you like what you have read here, but are not yet ready for a discussion, you can keep in touch with us by joining our mailing list or connecting with Kirsty on Linked In.

The link for our mailing list can be found here.

The link for connecting with Kirsty on Linked In can be found here.

72 Seasons – Trees turn Green Again

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30th April – 4th May – Trees turn Green Again

Drawing of two trees silhouetted against a plain green background

 

After the bare, browns of winter trees, now is the time that they begin to regain their green colours. Have a look at Werner’s colours: https://www.c82.net/werner/#greens. These colours of nature were used by Charles Darwin, so he could be certain that the green he described, was the green everyone saw. Can you match the shade of green to specific trees?

Do you know the old saying ‘If the ash comes out before the oak There’ll be a summer soak. If the oak comes out before the ash There’ll be a summer splash.’ Why not have a look and see which is first in your area?
The Woodland Trust, have a free app for identifying British trees, which is available to download for Android & iOS. For more information, see here: https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/tree-id-app/

 

For more information, check out our 72 Seasons page:  https://www.theevaluator.co.uk/72-seasons/

New Client: Creative Vision

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New Client: Creative Vision

We are excited to announce we’re evaluating a project with Creative Vision that delves into the rich oral history and heritage of Indian restaurants and the vibrant Bangladeshi community in the UK. Working in Luton, the project aims to capture the experiences of chefs, owners and community members who contributed to Indian Cuisine and culture in the UK.

These experiences will be brought together to create a book, containing real stories and interviews of Indian heritage in the UK.

We’re working with the project to evaluate and measure the impact on audiences, volunteers and participants and share our expertise in working with a wide range of communities.

Capturing impact in people’s own words

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At The Evaluator we recognise the value of collecting qualitative information for our evaluations. We take pride in capturing the genuine impact our projects or organisations have on individuals through hearing about their experiences in their own words.

The questions we ask are often simple and open to encourage individuals to speak honestly and let their stories unfold naturally. We feel privileged to get to hear about the amazing feedback and stories from people, and we love to share these stories with our clients.

We would also like to share some genuine quotes with you, spoken by real people who have experienced the impact from some of our clients:

We have heard from volunteers

“I truly appreciate everything the team does throughout the year to keep things moving forward. Thank you for helping to make so many people feel empowered, and seeing all of the work being done leaves me feeling so much hope for the future. Thank you for shining a light on all that can be done to make live music more accessible and equitable!” – Volunteer

“That was the biggest opportunity I’ve been given and that changed my life” – Volunteer

“It is such a joy and has made a really positive impact on my life. It has even changed the direction of my career” – Volunteer

 

We have also heard from participants

 

“For my general health I consider [client] more important than the NHS” – Participant of a wellbeing service

“[Client] has just been a godsend for me. Absolute Godsend” – Participant of a wellbeing service

“I really enjoyed the course as I love art and it also gave me a push to get out of the home and socialise more thus contributing to my wellbeing. Thank you”  – Participant of an Arts project

Thank you for the opportunity. Since starting with [project] I’m growing in self confidence and feel like I’m getting my life in order again. I’m putting plans in place and I’m more optimistic for my future.” – Participant of an Arts project

 

If you’re interested in learning more about our evaluation processes or exploring how we can help your organisation measure its impact, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’d love to chat!

What are the Indices of Multiple Deprivation?

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What are the Indices of Multiple Deprivation?

If you have ever read one of our reports, you’ll likely see reference to something called the Indices of Multiple Deprivation, or ‘IMD’.

We use the IMD as a powerful tool to analyse and understand the barriers and socio-economic status of audiences, participants, and volunteers. We use postcodes to measure the IMD status, and this means that people find it easy to answer. This does mean that we are looking at the household status too.
The results give our clients an idea of which people they are attracting to their projects and what barriers they may be facing in life.

Statistically, people who live within areas of greater deprivation have more barriers in their lives and are less likely to engage with the arts and nature and are more likely to have greater issues with their wellbeing. That’s one of the reasons funders do like to understand if projects and organisations are reaching people from the most deprived areas.
How are the indices of multiple deprivation worked out?
The IMD is worked out using a range of factors which are assessed across the UK and given a score. The factors are listed below:

  • Income deprivation: how many people in the area are experiencing low-income levels.
  • Employment deprivation: what is the rate of unemployment in the area?
  • Education deprivation: what are the average qualifications within the area, and how easy is it to access quality education?
  • Health deprivation and disability: what is the average life expectancy and disability prevalence in the area?
  • Crime: how much crime occurs within the area
  • Housing deprivation: how affordable is housing within the area, and are there other barriers to people accessing housing
  • Living environment: what is the air quality like in the area, and are there green spaces?

These scores are compiled to give a ranking, which are then categorised into ten deciles. The entirety of England falls equally into one of ten deciles, with decile 1 indicating the most deprivation, and area 10 having the least deprivation.
If you were targeting deprived areas, you might want to reach 50% of people living in IMD1 and 2 for example. Or if you wanted a perfect section of the UK represented in your project, you might want to see 10% of your audience from each decile.

We think the IMD is a useful tool and aim to use it in every evaluation where relevant.