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David Napthine and Duncan Brown argue for more rigorous, and useful, evaluation methods for arts projects

Practitioners in community arts consistently argue that art and participation in arts activities, are ‘a good thing’ that impacts positively on the community. To evidence this, some form of evaluation is usually required. However, at Changeling Productions our experience is that evaluation is often an exercise in self-justification and does not test the claims of the project. We believe that, although funders and practitioners are passionate about community engagement, more rigorous approaches are required.
Published criticism of arts evaluation techniques in the UK argues that its focus on outcomes often leads to superficial evaluations that gloss over negative aspects and obscure serious analysis of the processes through which arts participation impacts individuals and communities1.
In September 2008 we were asked by SingUp2 to form a ‘SingUp Community’ in South West Durham. SingUp states that “singing… has the power to change lives and help build stronger communities”, consistent with rhetoric across community art forms. We decided to test this claim, and the impact of our work, with techniques used by non-arts organisations to measure change.

NEW APPROACH
Working with Dr Kate Hampshire of Durham University’s Department of Anthropology, we designed a survey of participants and their families to measure changes in social capital, the networks that the young people and their immediate families took part in, looking at how these changed through participation and what new networks they joined (e.g. how their social capital increased), as a result of participation. However, understanding how social capital changes is not the same as understanding why it changes, thus Dr Hampshire and two PhD students conducted interviews with young people and their parents, which explored changing attitudes to themselves, their communities, and the arts over the length of the project. The researchers did the same with the artists.

KNOW THE AUDIENCE
South West Durham is a diverse area with small post-industrial towns, isolated farms and communities, poor transport links, significant economic disparity and areas of social isolation. We created three singing clusters based in three towns. Town one: relatively affluent market town serving a rural area and two former coal-mining urban settlements. Town two: significant levels of deprivation, and town three: market town with pockets of deprivation. The participants were children and young people of mixed abilities, experience and backgrounds.
Inevitably, project and survey design came up against the realities of implementing a new project. Difficulties in persuading schools – particularly secondary schools (through whom we recruited participants) – to work with us delayed the formation of the groups. In town one, the group came together quickly with relatively little turnover, in towns two and three formation took longer and turnover of participants was high. Most of the participants were girls, with the most boys concentrated in town one. Secondary school students dropped out more quickly than primary school children. As research progressed and was reported back to us, we began to understand some of the reasons for this.
Most participants were children who already attended other out of school groups and changes in social schedules of siblings or parents forced some to drop out. Some parents, particularly in town one, saw singing and the acquisition of singing skills as a long-term commitment whilst others, mostly in towns two and three, encouraged children to dip into activities for a term or two. Some participants saw opportunities to make new friends and connections yet these sometimes brought risks of becoming disengaged from existing networks of friends and feeling adrift. This was most obvious in town two, where most children kept their participation to themselves because their peer group would think it “gay”. Researchers distinguish between ‘bonding social capital’ which strengthens group ties and ‘bridging social capital’ which extends group ties. For these participants ‘bridging social capital’ poses risks to their well-being by distancing them from the (strongly bonded) norms of their communities. Nonetheless the research indicated that most children benefited from the experience – confidence, new friendships, new connections with parents through singing together, new horizons and aspirations, and having fun.

THEORY INTO PRACTICE
Space does not permit us to convey the full breadth and depth of this research3 but the process has convinced Changeling Productions that rigorous evaluation is both essential and beneficial to understand how community arts projects impact on individuals and communities. When Dr Hampshire conveyed some of her findings to us halfway through the project, we were able to alter our approach, creating a new group in town two that concentrated on singing games and exercises rather than formal performances (as it still runs today), and a new secondary schools group of equal numbers of boys and girls.
The arts can be an effective regeneration and social cohesion tool, if we understand the structural economic, social and cultural barriers to effective participation and if artists and funders use appropriate and rigorous evaluation. The arts can then present a powerful case for funding whilst at the same time improving our practice and creating effective relationships with funders and with those communities where we work.

 

David Napthine and Duncan Brown are from Changeling Productions, a theatre company that combines artforms to produce work in non-theatre venues, often working alongside communities. This article was written with Dr Kate Hampshire from Durham University.

 

1Daykin. N, ‘Context, culture and risk: towards an understanding of the impact of music in healthcare settings’, in Edwards, Jane (ed) ‘Music: promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts’. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007, pp.83–104
2SingUp is a government-funded programme to encourage singing among young people. www.singup.org
3See Hampshire and Matthijsse, ‘Can arts projects improve young people’s wellbeing? A social capital approach’, Social Science & Medicine (2010), doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.05.015. Copies of Dr. Hampshire’s full survey report are available on request from www.changelingproductions.co.uk.