Measuring impact of the arts as a creative learning charity

This week’s guest blog is the second part to a blog published in September 2018 from June Stevenson, Chief Executive of Artis Foundation, a creative learning charity. Part one looked at the start of Artis’ evaluation journey. June explained why they are using wellbeing lens in their evaluation process. Here, part two outlines what they’ve learnt over the last year and changes they are making to their evaluation. This blog is part of our Measuring Wellbeing series.

Last autumn I wrote a blog outlining where the Artis Foundation had got to in its evaluation journey and our aspirations for 2018-19. Now, as the year draws to a close and I patiently harass teachers for end of year pupil assessment submissions, it’s a great time to pause and reflect on how we have done.

In this post, I want to share a few thoughts that are very specific to our wellbeing programmes, and the aims we had with evaluating those. 

Using the right wellbeing scale

One ambition was to roll out our Artis Bounce programme and build on our first year’s evaluation methods. We had already identified that the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scales (WEMWBS) wasn’t the right one and were going to try using the Stirling Children’s Well-being Scale (SCWBS), being aimed at younger children.

Connecting programme aims and evaluation tool

We duly rolled it out, but when we came to evaluating the programme in February we realised that we hadn’t spent long enough making the connection from the programme aims to the tool. 

The data showed us that some pupils did indeed report greater wellbeing, but equally many did not, and it wasn’t possible to claim wide-ranging success in improving wellbeing. But of course, that isn’t actually what Artis Bounce is about! It’s about helping children explore and understand a range of emotions, and develop language and confidence in articulating feelings – most of which is about longer-term understanding and resilience. 

Results in this showed:

Overall results from the school’s survey for academic year 18/19:

• 73% of children had a perceived increase in their confidence
• 70% of children had a perceived increase in participation in Artis sessions
• 65% of children had a perceived increase in their communication skills

Where we really hope to have impact is when these eight- and nine-year olds are at secondary school, and managing without the intervention of a referral to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.

We have now got an evaluation tool in place that reflects these aims. It’s much more rewarding to use. And, of course, the qualitative interviews we have also been using are invaluable. 

One thing we heard loud and clear was how much teachers felt they were also learning from the sessions, and our newest iteration of the programme has a much stronger degree of teacher involvement.

Connecting funders and practitioners

Stepping back even further and thinking about our funders, another vital message we have realised is just how much we are valued for being a ‘connector’ between quite different worlds – bringing together health commissioners and Clinical Commissioning Groups, as well as knowing how to engage with classroom teachers and schools, while remaining an arts-based organisation. It’s a fascinating middle ground to operate in and we are relishing the chance to help different stakeholders come together to make meaningful differences for the children’s wellbeing.