Building Impact: Creative Black Country's Evaluation Journey with Earthen Lamp
Sajida Carr (left) and Vishalakshi Roy (right) at the GEM Conference in September
In September 2024 Sajida Carr, Director of Operations and Development at Creative Black Country and Vishalakshi Roy, director at Earthen Lamp, attended the Group for Education in Museums (GEM) conference in Bristol. This was a large conference for those in the museum sector with 490 delegates, 231 online and 259 in person. Sajida and Vish were there to present on the topic of ‘Embedding Evaluation in Our Journey.’ Creative Black Country has been working with Earthen Lamp as our external evaluators since 2016 and this conference was an excellent opportunity for us to share some insights that we hope can help others reflect on their own learning and evaluation processes.
Evaluation has always been a mandatory part of the Creative People and Places (CPP) programme and in the early days of Creative Black Country the amount of evaluation, alongside the challenges of creating a team and a programme from scratch, felt slightly overwhelming. Over the years, we’ve fine-tuned how we approach monitoring and evaluation and felt it was important to share our experiences and reflections both at the GEM conference and via this blog.
Developing a Tailored Evaluation Framework
Earthen Lamp help to ensure that we have always evaluated our programme thoughtfully. They created a framework with a focus on ownership, skills development, growth, and learning which has been instrumental in how we monitor the work that we do. This tailored approach includes using a master file for collating all activities, lots of audience surveys, post activity evaluation forms, reflection meetings, and a focus on case studies which showcase the diversity of the programme.
The Power of Reflection and Relationships
There have been lots of changes to how we as a CPP programme engage with evaluation. One of the things that has made a huge difference for us as a team is holding quarterly reflection sessions with Earthen Lamp. These sessions give us the space to come together and talk openly—about what’s working, what’s not, and what we might need to change. It’s made our whole process much more transparent, and because of that, we’re able to resolve issues a lot faster.
Capturing Stories and Human Impact
More recently, a real turning point for us was bringing on an Impact Lead. Before that, we were collecting lots of data, but we weren’t really capturing the human side of the work—the real stories about how our projects were impacting people. Now, we’re much better at gathering those stories and sharing them through blogs, reports, and infographics. It’s helped us make our impact much clearer, both to the community and to our funders.
Another thing that has been surprisingly effective is something really simple: just picking up the phone. We make it a point to regularly check in with the community groups we’re working with. Speaking on the phone rather than purely communicating via email is an easy way to stay connected, set expectations, and offer support. We’ve also started holding mandatory welcome sessions for anyone we’re commissioning. This helps ensure that everyone’s on the same page right from the start. You can have all the tools, and surveys in the world, but if you don’t have real relationships with the people involved, those tools will never get used.
Of course, there are always challenges. In the beginning, we were over-evaluating everything without much focus, and that was overwhelming. Managing all the data was tough too, and we had to find a balance to ensure our evaluation process was meaningful while still meeting funders' needs. These are ongoing challenges but having the time and space to reflect on our processes and tools is very important to both Creative Black Country and Earthen Lamp.
Guiding Principles for Meaningful Evaluation
Having to distil nearly a decade of work into a ten-minute presentation at GEM was a difficult but ultimately very helpful process as it required us to think about the key principles of our evaluation journey.
Be human: Build real relationships with people. Evaluation only works if you’re connecting with others on a human level.
Embrace flexibility: Don’t be afraid to evolve your evaluation process. It’s okay to try new approaches and adjust as you learn.
Focus on what matters: Avoid the temptation to collect too much data. Focus on what really reflects your impact.
Prioritise storytelling: Numbers are important, but stories bring those numbers to life. Capture the real stories from your community to show your true impact.
Build in reflection time: Regular team reflection sessions help you stay connected and make quick improvements.
Keep people at the heart what you do: Evaluation should be meaningful to the people you serve. Their feedback should guide your process.
Communicate clearly with stakeholders: Make sure everyone knows their role and avoids duplicating requests from the community.
By focusing on these principles, we’ve been able to build a strong, meaningful evaluation process that serves our community, our team, and our funders. It’s a continuous journey, and we’re always learning.
Images courtesy of the GEM conference.