Meaningful Evaluation in Arts, Culture and Health

Discover meaningful ways to evaluate arts, culture and health

In arts, culture and health settings, experiences are often complex, relational and difficult to reduce to numbers. Our approach to evaluation celebrates and centres meaning, exploring how meanings are created, experienced and shared with others.

This short course invites you to think differently about evaluation by introducing and explaining approaches that place people, relationships, stories, and lived experiences at the centre. Through creative, ethnographic and participatory approaches, you’ll consider how evaluation can create space for diverse perspectives and experiences.

Place lived experience at the centre of evaluation

You’ll consider how participation, observation, and collaboration can deepen understanding of health and wellbeing, while reflecting on why lived experience matters in evaluating arts and cultural activities.

Experiment with creative methods in practice

You’ll engage with creative ethnographic approaches, data collection methods, and real-world case studies with Scottish Ballet and Music in Hospitals & Care that demonstrate how meaningful evaluation can be developed in practice. Documenting outcomes and measurable health results are an important part of evaluation, but it’s also important to explore processes, relationships and experiences.

Share stories and learn through experience

By the end of the course, you’ll have developed practical ideas, methods and tools for undertaking meaning-centred evaluation. You’ll also gain a broader understanding of how meaningful evaluation can help redefine whose stories are told, how they are told, who is listening, and how decisions are made.

This course is for emerging and experienced artists, arts and culture professionals, freelance or professional evaluators or impact managers, researchers, CPD learners, health practitioners, students, project managers, curators, social care staff and activities coordinators, funders, trustees and board members, and policymakers interested in meaningful evaluation and lived experience approaches.

We focus specifically on those working at the intersection of arts, culture and health, recognising the specific challenges faced regarding evidencing the value of this work.

This course has been created in collaboration with:

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, University of Florida, Queen Margaret University, Scottish Ballet, Music in Hospitals & Care, St Columba’s Hospice Care, Culture Counts, Science Ceilidh, Prescribe Culture and The Binks Hub.

This course is for emerging and experienced artists, arts and culture professionals, freelance or professional evaluators or impact managers, researchers, CPD learners, health practitioners, students, project managers, curators, social care staff and activities coordinators, funders, trustees and board members, and policymakers interested in meaningful evaluation and lived experience approaches.

We focus specifically on those working at the intersection of arts, culture and health, recognising the specific challenges faced regarding evidencing the value of this work.

This course has been created in collaboration with:

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, University of Florida, Queen Margaret University, Scottish Ballet, Music in Hospitals & Care, St Columba’s Hospice Care, Culture Counts, Science Ceilidh, Prescribe Culture and The Binks Hub.

• Demonstrate a critical understanding of the wider context of evaluation and why it’s important for work at the intersection of arts, culture and health.
• Demonstrate a critical understanding of planning and implementing meaningful evaluation and its application in research.
• Critically reflect on the importance of meaning-making in evaluation, including the development of creative and qualitative approaches for delivering evaluation.
• Demonstrate a critical understanding of the practical application of evaluation and how this applies to inclusion, access and equity.
• Effectively communicate evaluation findings to different stakeholders and audiences.