The full report can be accessed here, and we recommend that you read it to obtain a detailed understanding of the research undertaken and the findings achieved.
Cultural organisations are at the heart of their communities, offering experiences that inspire, connect, and enrich lives. But how does the level of deprivation in an area affect the reach of these organisations and the experiences of their audiences or participants?
Our latest research, Effects of Deprivation within Evaluations Using the Impact & Insight Toolkit, addresses this question by exploring the relationships between:
- The experiences of people attending cultural works,
- The level of deprivation in the areas where cultural organisations are based, and
- The deprivation levels of the communities they engage with.
What Do We Mean by ‘Deprivation’?
Deprivation can be measured in terms of employment, health, income, education, and other factors. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) combines these to create an overall index for each area across England (ONS, 2019). A deprivation index is a numerical score between 0 (most deprived) and 10 (least deprived)[1].
When an organisation asks (and the respondent answers!) the question, ‘What is your postcode?’, we can source the corresponding deprivation index from the ONS, fuelling this area of research.
Organisations participating in the Toolkit project work in regions with varying levels of deprivation and attract people who similarly live in regions with different levels of deprivation.
What Questions Can the Report Help Us Answer?
The report addresses a range of important questions, including:
- Are Toolkit survey respondents typically from areas of least or most deprivation?
- Do scores for dimensions differ between areas of least and most deprivation?
- Does an organisation’s choice of dimensions depend on whether it is located in an area of least or most deprivation?
These are just some of the questions the report addresses. We suggest reading the full report for a comprehensive understanding of the analysis, as well as a couple of recommendations based on our findings.
Final Thoughts
This research demonstrates how your Toolkit data is contributing to a wider dataset, enabling us to answer questions that are particularly relevant for the arts and cultural sector. Furthermore, this research demonstrates how data collected in the Impact & Insight Toolkit project can be connected with publicly available, open data to expand opportunities for learning.
Every time you tag your evaluation with properties, you contribute to an increasingly detailed picture of the organisations using the Toolkit, the work being evaluated, and its effect on audiences and participants. The more detailed this data becomes, the richer and more contextualised our analysis can be.
We thoroughly recommend spending some time reading and digesting the report, Effects of Deprivation within Evaluations Using the Impact & Insight Toolkit. The detail it contains will not only deepen your understanding of our findings but also support your own evaluation needs.
If you have any questions about the report and/or its findings, please get in touch via [email protected].
Featured image credit: Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash
[1] Read more about the Office of National Statistics’ English indices of Deprivation 2019 here.