What is the background to this resource?

Here at Counting What Counts, we’ve realised that we have lots of useful information and ideas about evaluation that we’d love to share with you that don’t necessarily fit into our regular Impact & Insight Toolkit Project remit. By this, we refer to Arts Council England’s guidance for organisations to demonstrate commitment to the Ambition and Quality Investment Principle via the Toolkit [1].

We’ve been thinking about how to best share this information, and we’re very excited to launch a new feature for our users: the Evaluation Lab (The Lab). This is a place where you can find extra survey templates to aid your organisation’s evaluation work.

The Lab has largely been developed in response to conversations with organisations throughout the Toolkit project. Across these discussions, we have heard a wide range of experiences and needs, shaped by different types of work, audiences, organisational contexts, and approaches to evaluation.

Think of The Lab as a place to explore new and practical starting points. We know that starting from a blank page can feel daunting, so the resources in The Lab are designed to help you build and adapt an approach that works for your organisation.

The Lab will be an opt-in feature, clearly differentiated from the core Toolkit offer.

It is supplementary and intended to complement the Toolkit project.

 

How does it work?

We are sharing new survey templates for different areas of work for you to benefit from. These are topics that have often come up in the conversations we’ve had with users.

The Lab has its own section within the Impact & Insight Toolkit website, where you can find information about the available resources. This section also hosts information which supports each template, to help you understand how to use it and how to adapt them to your own context.

We recommend referring to this information when using the Evaluation Lab templates and surveys within your Culture Counts dashboard.

 

You can access The Lab here, or via the main menu on our website.

 

This is a learning project for us, so we’ll be asking for feedback from those who opt-in to exploring and using the resources in The Lab. This is so that we can develop the content that we offer there. The Lab differs from some of our other resources in that the included surveys have not yet been extensively tested. Instead, they are formed from our own team’s experience and research, informed by conversations with organisations across the sector.

 

How do I opt in to The Evaluation Lab?

If you would like to opt in (free of charge!) please email us and request that we add The Lab templates to your account.

Once enabled you can browse the available survey templates and use them to create your own. How closely you follow the templates is entirely up to you!

 

What are we hoping to achieve?

It’s about using data for your own organisation’s specific needs and what matters most to you.

Our intention is for The Evaluation Lab to help you to home in on what your individual evaluation needs are. This could be gathering feedback from specific respondent groups or certain areas of work that you have found challenging to evaluate in the past. The templates and surveys are intended as starting points and springboards for further ideas, rather than fixed approaches.

This is an evolving resource, with new templates and resources added in response to your feedback and emerging needs.

We encourage you to check back regularly as The Lab grows!

 

 

[1] Essential read – https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/blog/essential-read-ambition-quality

 

Featured image by Vedrana Filipović on Unsplash