Creative People and Places

The brief Make/Shift is looking for an Evaluator to co-design and deliver an evaluation that identifies if and how our key aims are being met and the most significant changes emerging from our work.

We want a collaborative and reflective evaluation framework that helps us to inform the programme as it develops and to understand what is and isn't working. It needs to help us learn, reflect, and change as the programme develops.

The evaluation must be accessible to a wide range of audiences, providing them with compelling evidence, insights and stories of impact and change.

We are looking for a supplier to provide the required services over a two year period and are currently working to a budget of £30,000

Context The evaluation needs to clearly answer the three research questions set by our core funder Arts Council England for the national Creative People and Places programme:

Are more people from places of least engagement experiencing and inspired by the arts?

To what extent was the aspiration for excellence of art and excellence of the process of engaging communities achieved?

Which approaches were successful and what were lessons learned?

Additionally, we want to assess the impact of the programme and how we are delivering against our vision and Theory of Change for Make/Shift. The priority is to meet ACE evaluation needs, but we would love to hear your ideas on how we can include evaluative aspects of story collecting, connections to people and place, and creative approaches to evaluation.

The evaluation framework should measure Make/Shift's performance against our stated outputs, outcomes, and impact, as set out in our Theory of Change. These will be reviewed annually using data from the evaluation and will be reported to our strategic partners and funders including Arts Council England. Any evaluation framework must take into account that Make/Shift is an action research project, meaning we need to be able to learn quickly from what we're doing and adapt approaches accordingly.

Work required:

Evaluation of Make/Shift needs to be an iterative process and include both formative and summative methodology. Data collection will need to be integrated into all of our activities. The evaluation needs to inform our approach and decision making at every level, from projects to strategy and longer-term vision.

Evaluation will be a reflective process focused on learning and change. Therefore, we are looking for a partner to work collaboratively with us on this journey, suggesting how lessons can be fed back into the programme as it develops.

Additional information: Timeline • Deadline for expressions of interest is 10 March 2023 • Invitation for interview / discussion will be communicated by 14 March after which suppliers will be invited to register as a prospective supplier and complete a tender process