Background

The Impact & Insight Toolkit was commissioned primarily to support Arts Council England (ACE)-funded National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs) to deliver against the Ambition & Quality Investment Principle during the 2023+ funding round[1].

However, from the get-go, both we and ACE were keen to extend this support beyond NPOs, helping others strengthen their quality evaluation practices.  Therefore, from July 2023, the Toolkit became available to other recipients of ACE funding, including those in receipt of: Cultural Recovery Fund, Museum Estate and Development Fund, Music Hub, and National Lottery Project Grants (NLPGs).

This blogpost considers NLPG participation in the Toolkit project, and reflects on what this says about those participating NLPGs.

A Brief Introduction to the Project Grant

The NLPG is a fund that is designed to financially support organisations or individuals to deliver a specific arts or cultural project. When considering whether an application will be successful, ACE ensures that the application addresses their strategy, Let’s Create. Aligning with Let’s Create, the applicant needs to identify which of the following three outcomes their project will focus on:

Creative people – The public taking part in creative activity, either during the project or in the future.

Creative communities – Making a difference to a place or community, either during the project or in the future.

A creative and cultural country – Developing professional creative or cultural practice, either during the project or in the future[2].

 

In addition to one of these specific outcomes, recipients of NLPG need to,

Reach and engage people and communities in England with high quality creativity and culture[3].

Being in receipt of public money, successful applicants are expected to evaluate the success of their project against agreed quality indicators, determined on a case-by-case basis.  Depending on the specific project and its nuances, the Impact & Insight Toolkit can be an appropriate quality evaluation method through which the recipient of NLPG can evidence the extent to which they are meeting their individual objectives and supporting ACE’s Let’s Create strategy.  Consequently, an NLPG’s participation in the Toolkit project can be used in future funding applications, demonstrating a commitment to ACE’s strategy.

Project Grants and the Toolkit

NLPG participation

Since 2023, 163 recipients of NLPG have registered to participate in the Toolkit project. 60 of these have been active in the online platform we use, Culture Counts, creating evaluations and participating in data collection.  A key aspect of the Toolkit approach to evaluation is the selection of outcome-focussed questions, known as ‘dimensions’, which are indicators of an organisation’s ambitions. An example is below:

 

Dimension label – Nature

Dimension statement – It made me feel connected to nature

 

If a Toolkit participant were to choose this dimension, it would be fair to assume that one of their ambitions would be for their event’s audience, or activity’s participants, to experience a feeling of connection to the physical world including plants, animals and/or the landscape that exists without human intervention…

We are in the fortunate position of being able to see which dimensions are being chosen most often by NLPG recipients, indicating where their priorities lie. This prompted us to consider which of ACE’s three outcomes (creative people; creative communities; a creative and cultural country) are the focus for NLPGs.

Now, before we go any further, it’s important to note that just over 1% of successful NLPGs have actively used Culture Counts to date. Therefore, it would be irresponsible to use this information to make sweeping statements about NLPGs collectively.  Instead, we will simply be considering the NLPGs that have chosen to participate in the Toolkit project.

 

Dimension Selection

Of the approximately 90 dimensions available, the table below shows the ‘top ten’ chosen by NLPGs[4]:

Dimension Label	Dimension Statement	Frequency of use in evaluations by NLPGs
Inclusion	It made me feel welcome and included	77
Rigour	It was well thought through and put together	63
Enthusiasm	I would come to something like this again	58
Captivation	It was absorbing and held my attention	54
Cultural Contribution	It provides an important addition to the cultural life of the area	53
Connection	It helped me to feel connected to my local community	52
Local Impact	It's important that it's happening here	49
Acceptance	I felt like I could be myself	49
Distinctiveness	It was different from things I've experienced before	46
Access	It gave me the opportunity to access activities I would otherwise not have access to	44

 

If you prefer to see this information as a bar chart, please do so below:

 

So, what does this data tell us?

By looking at the dimensions chosen by NLPG recipients, we can see which of ACE’s three outcomes are being prioritised by Toolkit-participating NLPG recipients. We can do this through the ‘mapping’ of dimensions to the outcomes.

 

 

Interestingly, there isn’t a large leaning towards Creative Communities or Creative People; the most frequently used dimensions are relatively evenly spread across these two outcomes.

Two dimensions (Rigour and Captivation) don’t neatly map onto the three outcomes that combine to form Let’s Create. However, they are both qualities which speak to ACE’s aim to provide people with ‘high quality creativity and culture’[5].

In fact, Rigour and Captivation were deemed ‘core qualities’ to be measured by NPOs in the previous funding round, 2019-23. Therefore, it is reasonable that they would be measured by NLPG recipients, to whom ‘high quality creativity and culture’ are also deemed to be important.

Another notable takeaway from this exercise is that the top ten dimensions chosen by NLPG recipients do not align with the third outcome – A Creative and Cultural Country. In the context of NLPG, ACE considers this to be ‘developing professional creative or cultural practice’.  This is interesting because there are dimensions available which do align with this outcome, and yet they have not been chosen by the NLPG recipients.

A couple of examples of dimensions that ‘speak’ to this outcome would be:

• Artistic skills – It helped improve my artistic skills
• Opportunity – It opened up new opportunities for me

This prompts the consideration of whether:

• Recipients of NLPG that are participating in the Toolkit project are less inclined to focus on the third outcome
• Recipients of NLPG don’t realise, or are unaware, that dimensions addressing the third outcome are available in Culture Counts

While we can’t draw any conclusions about which of these factors may be at play, it’s certainly thought-provoking to see the choices NLPGs are making, and it prompts us to reflect on how we might better support them in using the Toolkit to its full potential.

It has been fantastic working with the NLPGs, supporting them in obtaining useful data for funding applications and, most importantly, aiding their organisation’s development.

Closing Thoughts

Despite being commissioned to primarily support NPOs demonstrate Ambition & Quality, the Toolkit is applicable to a large range of arts and cultural organisations, including NLPG recipients.

With all this in mind, let’s take this opportunity to raise a couple of points…

Firstly, the Toolkit can support recipients of ACE funding to demonstrate how they are:

• Aligning with ACE’s strategy, Let’s Create
• Meeting their individual funding agreement
• Recognising the value in obtaining feedback from those that experience their work

Secondly, in addition to those in receipt of NLPG, the Impact & Insight Toolkit is available, at no cost, to those in receipt of any Arts Council England funding AND those that would be eligible to receive funding.

It is a great opportunity to learn about the effects of the arts or cultural work you deliver and to further your experience in data-driven decision-making.

If you are interested in registering to participate in this quality evaluation project, please take a look at the Approach page on our website for more information.

 

 

Featured image credit: dylan nolte on Unsplash

 

 

 

[1] Arts Council England’s 2022 comment that Impact & Insight Toolkit is a tool funded to support data-led, quality evaluation

[2] Arts Council England’s Guidance for Applicants of the National Lottery Project Grant (£30,000 and under), June 2025. Consider what your project mainly focusses on, through the lens of Let’s Create (pp.28-30)

[3] Arts Council England’s Guidance for Applicants of the National Lottery Project Grant (£30,000 and under), June 2025. Identifying which projects they fund (p.13).

[4] Data obtained June 2025

[5] Arts Council England’s Guidance for Applicants of the National Lottery Project Grant (£30,000 and under), June 2025. Identifying which projects they fund (p.13).