Valuing the Arts: Evaluation Tools for Arts Practice
Evaluate the impact of your art and use evaluation to inform your arts practice
Date & Time:
Tuesday, July 10, 2018 | 8:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Price:
Organizational Staff Registration - $200
Individual Artist Registration - $75
Location:
Wilder Center (Amherst H. Wilder Foundation)
451 Lexington Parkway North
Saint Paul, MN 55104
Description
How do you measure the value of your art? Art communicates ideas, experiences, and values; evaluation is one way for you to enhance the way that audiences engage with your work. Ultimately, we want to help you answer two questions: “What is the impact of my art?” and “How can I use evaluation to inform my arts practice?”
Who Should Attend
This training is for arts organizations and artists who want to learn about evaluating their art. This training will showcase practical approaches for incorporating evaluation into your arts practice. Throughout the training, you will practice evaluation skills in a series of guided exercises. The exercises can guide the creation of new evaluation tools or help refine evaluation tools you already use.
Learning Objectives
- How to describe the expected impact of your art. You will learn how to make and use theories of change. A theory of change is a process used to define and describe your approach, goals, and desired impact of your art. We will practice making a theory of change based on your work.
- How to write and use evaluation questions. An evaluation question guides an evaluation and summarizes what you want to learn. An example of an evaluation question is, “How did my art help to build relationships between neighbors?” We will practice writing effective evaluation questions that will provide meaningful insights about your work.
- How to collect good data. Good data can provide you with information about the impact of your art, and must be systematically collected using an appropriate data collection approach. You will learn about different ways of collecting credible, reliable data. We will practice writing effective questions and brainstorm creative data collection approaches.
- How to make meaning from your data. You will learn about how to use the findings from your evaluation to report to funders or pursue new funding, inform your programming, and communicate about the impact your art is having with your audiences.