I'm endlessly fascinated by the way any object, let alone a museum collection, can become some personal to people and interpreted so subjectively. We bring to things that which we already know. It's only possible to see and understand the object the way you alone can see and understand it. With that in mind I was fascinated to watch this short film of how some students of Manchester Metropolitan University worked with a collection of random domestic objects from Victorian times. These were items from the Mary Greg Collection at Manchester Art Gallery. I also recommend you visit the blog for this research and interpretation project. You need know nothing about Mary, her collection, the university or the art gallery in advance. Just enjoy what you find at the blog. I suspect it will reel you in just as it has me. Enjoy this short film (made by Asta Films)
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Manchester Beacon for Public Engagement (with whom I work, as part of their evaluation group) are looking for creative producers / documenters to record some of their outcomes of their work... TENDER FOR CREATIVE SUPPORT TO CAPTURE AND PROMOTE LEARNING FROM UNIVERSITY-COMMUNITY PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT PILOT PROJECTS Deadline 2pm 27th August THE PROJECT The Manchester Beacon seeks creative producer(s), organisation or consortia of creative practitioners to work alongside upto 10 collaborative pilot projects to help capture and promote the learning, benefits and impact (the difference a project made). Each pilot project involves university staff (researchers/ staff/ postgraduate students) working with community/ (not-for-profit) partners. We are looking for resourceful, people-focussed producers skilled at creating engaging narratives using media-based tools and techniques to produce a portfolio of stories to document the challenges, successes and lessons learned from project activity and collaborative working. Applicants are encouraged to present approaches that present a learning opportunity for participants to engage in the process and use media to disseminate their stories themselves beyond the life of the projects. teacher tom. Who wouldn't love to arrive at a school where your teacher wears a cape? A teacher who says his blog is from the children? Who wouldn't love to send their child to a teacher who loves their job so much he says, "I intend to teach at <insert your school name here> for the rest of my life". A teacher who not only shares what your child has done, but why and how. Who makes learning looks like such good messy fun. Who can make anything out of anything and show you how to do it too. At a time when the future for creative learning in the UK looks quite depressing, it gives me hope to read what people like teacher tom are doing, it makes me smile about what children can achieve in good hands. Imagine if all teachers were like teacher tom. Incidentally if you go to his blog and click on his profile, you'll see a list of other blogs teacher tom follows, many of which are equally wonderful. If you know of any other great teacher blogs, so share them in the comments below, I'd love to see more. I'm now part of the network exploring the SROI model of social returns on investment. It's way of putting monetary values on the sorts of evaluation and participation outcomes that occur in the projects I work with, and demonstrating what difference the investment has really made - what happened that coulnd't or wouldn't have happened without.
It's also a way for me to offer organisations the sort of robustness they might expect from an academic research team. A lot of it will be new to me but I'm hoping it will ad a layer of technical formality to the likes of MLA's Generic Social Outcomes. Indeed MLA have already commissioned large scale pilot evaluation projects testing SROI's capacity for analysing the values of specific library and museums schemes. Exploring qualitative outcomes, impacts and benefits is something I really enjoy. There are times though, when stakeholders need more quantifiable results and this should enable me to provide that too. SROI has been developed, and continues to be developed by it's members, to support arts and culture, public services, science and education - all of which are fields I work with. It also supports employment and business, environment and climate, and health and care. So I hope this means it will become a tool that is recognised across all organisations. I should add though, that for me this will be an additional way of identifying what works and where things can be improved. It won't be the only one. I don't think any single tool can really capture everything that's important about a project. It's important to create a variety of tools bespoke to each separate project to cross-reference information and help pick out trends, similarities, patterns but also individual stories - the illustrations of people who have really felt something change as a result of taking part. But this does offer a way to create evidence of quantifiable outcomes alongside the qualitative benefits I'm always keen to advocate based on evidence. Interestingly DEMOS have just released a report suggesting that the approaches underpinning SROI are sound though a range of shared outcome measurements across the public sector, which can be gathered more simply than SROI is able to, is desperately needed in order to help smaller organisations demonstrate their worth. I can't argue with that kind of logic, but until it arrives, SROI seems to be the closest there is to different sectors speaking to the same language. It's the start of a new learning journey for me, and a welcome addition to what I will be able to offer the organisations I work with. In evaluation, looking at outcomes is vital. When you've invested in a project of course you'll need to know what was achieved and where there are still gaps. But it can be cumbersome reading mounds and mounds of text in a report. Charts, graphs and percentages can help clarify, but can still make for dull reading (and for some feel too much like maths homework).
To help busy partners to any project, finding a variety of ways to report on activity can make all the difference between people remembering what went well and being able to advocate the value of their work... or not. I've recently been creating a toolkit for early years practitioners looking at how creative engagement can help achieve new and unexpected results. Its aim is to be quickly digestible and highly practical. The toolkit is based on the activity of ten creative early years projects in schools and Children's Centres in the North of England. The projects were mapped against the Early Years Foundation Stage six areas of learning. To illustrate which of the EYFS outcomes the projects really brought to life, I used wordle to create this at a glance illustration. The larger the word, the more presence it had in the projects. You can see here Personal, Social and Emotional development was the strongest feature across the programme overall. It doesn't replace the need for writing other information in the report of course. However the teachers, children's centre staff and creative practitioners involved, and readers of the toolkit, can now instantly see where the projects thrived and what kinds of outcomes similar work might expect to achieve, so much more quickly and easily than deciphering a big chunk of writing or trying to analyse a graph. John Cleese talks about the structure of thinking, being creative, and writing. When I was pointed in the direction of this video it was just what I needed to help me focus on a report I'm writing. Take 5 minutes to watch it, it could save hours in the long run. Following earlier posts about proposed changes to the child protection initiatives which would add to the CRB systems already in place, today it has been announced that the proposed changes have been halted.
This means the scrapping of the vetting & barring scheme run by the ISA (Independent Safeguarding Authority) with a view to producing a slimmed down initiative in the future. You can read more in this *BBC article* For several years there has been debate about the potential for using the arts to help improve literacy and numeracy (and other subjects). For many arts organisations being able to find ways to achieve this has been a necessity to survive. For some this raises discomfort, those who feel it's not what the arts are for and can run the risk of people losing sight of other benefits that perhaps are more intrinsic to artistic practice. Personally I don't choose one side or the other of the argument, there are truths and benefits (and no doubt pitfalls) either way. Though I do know this - for children and young people who for whatever reason are not as developed as their peers in language and numeracy skills, the arts can present a more accessible way to unpick learning that some other formats. I've seen it happen first hand. I can't say for sure it's specific to the arts - I do think it's something about a creative approach generally and the opportunity to work in different environments and include kinaesthetic activity. All of which is common, but not exclusive, to arts activity. However - last year I was asked to work with the inspirational arts producer Elizabeth Lynch to evaluate Performing for Success. An arts based project building on the proven achievements of Playing for Success (which used sports to improve young people's numeracy and literacy skills). It was a unique programme in that it met Extended School agendas and relied on partnerships between extended school deliverers experienced in sport, and arts or cultural organisations. However there was no national model, each pilot area approached the structure in different ways, some more effectively and successfully than others. It was DCFS funded initiative but not via the 'usual' channels (such as Find Your Talent or Creative Partnerships) but through an independent education contractor, Rex Hall Associates. In the current climate who can say what will happen to these kinds of initiatives. However if you'd like to read our response to the programme you can download it *here* UPDATE: I have learned that Rex Hall sadly passed away on May 31st. My experience of working with him was brief but so inspiring to see first hand the difference one person can make. My thoughts and wishes go to all of those close to him. The new Museum of Museums in Trafford has opened, quietly, without much fuss. Which is an unusual way to enter the museum world. Its websites say, ”In spring 2010 the Museum of Museums will open to the general public exhibiting the most comprehensive programme of multi-themed collections in the UK.“ and “A breakthrough concept in cultural attractions, The Trafford Centre has brought together a wide range of heritage exhibitions form public museums and private collections to create a stimulating and unique experience“ Since it was on my doorstep and no-one I knew inside or outside the museum world seemed to know anything about it, I went to see it first hand and blog it thoroughly to help satisfy the curiosity bubbling up among my colleagues, contacts, clients and friends. Read the full account on the mini-blog *here* There are some things I've thought it would be good to do for a long time, but it's never been part of my paid work to do them, and so they haven't got done. I'm noting them here as a reminder to myself and an invitation to anyone who is interested, to commission me to do them, and share them freely and publicly (or at least under creative commons) for the wider benefit of those who can use them:
1. A list of what managing, researching and evaluating many projects has taught me about partnership - what it does or doesn't mean, what it looks like, the different shapes it takes, the benefits, challenges, pitfalls, successes, opportunities and more 2. A top ten of findings / recommendations that arise in my evaluation work. Mostly around the process of managing projects - resources, processes, staffing, communication, planning, sustainability and legacy - those sorts of things. There are so many shared benefits and challenges I see time and time again, to the point it makes me sad that these things have to be learned afresh each time with publicly funded activity. Wouldn't it be better if we can do more learning from each other and move things on? 3. A portfolio of what creative consultation / creative evaluation can look like - examples of things I've tried myself and examples that other people have developed in their work. There might be more to this list of lists but these are the freshest in my mind just now. So if you can't afford a specialist consultant for these things, do keep popping back, maybe one day someone will have commissioned them from me and they will be available to you for free. |
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...BlogI'm most interested in how the public, your public, whoever that may be, engages with culture and creativity.
And if it nurtures creativity and develops personal, social or professional skills I'm absolutely all ears. Categories
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