Evaluation framework

Evaluation plays a crucial role in the design, development and delivery of all our culture/SHIFT projects in our work on embedding arts into climate. It helps us to understand how our interventions are implemented, what the impacts are and what we might change in the future.

During the course of a SGSAH-funded collaborative doctoral award at the University of Glasgow, Emma Hall, in collaboration with Culture for Climate Scotland’s culture/SHIFT team, worked on creating an evaluation framework, which you can download below. There’s also a shorter visual (PNG) summary of the framework. The framework offers a rigorous approach to creating evaluation that fits the nature of arts-climate projects and the kinds of value that emerge from these.

Evaluation framework (PDF 2MB)

Evaluation framework visual summary (PNG 162KB)

The framework is based around five fundamental principles that should define the approach to running culture/SHIFT projects:

• Bespoke: Evaluation should be agile, responsive and tailored to unique circumstances.
• Holistic: Evaluation should consider the whole process, including collective, organisational and systemic change.​
• Values-led: Evaluation should be inclusive, creative and participatory.​
• Complexity appropriate: Evaluation should account for multiple levels & stakeholders, diverse and interacting components, and uncertainty. ​
• Reflexive: Evaluation should shape ongoing design and delivery and inform future work.​

A visual summary of the five evaluation principles. Credit: Culture for Climate Scotland.

The framework includes recommendations for tools and methods to use to develop project evaluation and includes links to further useful resources. Some key insights from the framework include:

• Evaluation should be included in early-stage planning discussions with project partners, treating evaluation as a part of everyone’s job, not a separate area.
• The evaluation approach should be open to change during the project so it can respond to new outcomes that can emerge from process-led work
• Evaluation should not be too time-consuming. Avoid evaluating the things that do not matter and try to integrate data collection into other activities.
• Evaluation methods should avoid intruding on or conflicting with the creative nature of these projects. Creative data collection methods can be more fun and less intrusive, leading to better results.
• Evaluation should be presented in different ways for different audiences. Researchers, policymakers and community members will all look for different things.