Consultancy, Research and Evaluation
“It’s been a fascinating experience working with Jo, whose evaluation of our work in children’s critical care has given us enough learning and insight to reflect on for the next decade!”
Making Meaning From - and Measuring - the 'Magic'...
Understanding and evidencing growth in personal, social and emotional competencies – and their wider impacts – is notoriously challenging. How do we:
- Make meaningful sense of the deep and long-lasting impact of improving wellbeing, resilience, self-esteem, confidence and other ‘soft’ skills?
- Measure and evidence the outcomes of practice which is about people, not numbers?
- Articulate and communicate those changes in ways that will be taken seriously?
This is a solvable problem! We support a range of organisations to answer these exact questions; below are a few examples of our existing partnerships.
We’ll only work with partners if we (and you) are sure that ours is the right kind of input so, at whatever stage in your plans you are, just call or send us a message to find out more about our approach.
SEND Education
We’ve been working with Attenborough Arts Centre since 2020, initially creating and now developing the evaluation framework for their ‘SENsory Atelier’ programme.
Designed around the diversity and complexity of participants’ learning and communication needs, this ensures the programme’s impacts on children to be recorded consistently, regardless of how those experiences are expressed.
Download the framework here.
What Does 'Wellbeing' Mean?
Based in the East of England, ‘MiniDonks’ improves the wellbeing of individuals in vulnerable circumstances through visits by their six miniature donkeys.
They support services such as older people and dementia settings, prisons, special schools, mental health wards, hospices, brain injury units, day care for learning disabled adults and more, and ‘wellbeing’ means something different for each setting.
Because many of their service-users can’t share feedback in reliable or consistent ways, we’ve created a framework which which, firstly, doesn’t necessitate verbal input from them, and also adapts to individuals’ diverse wellbeing needs.
At the end of this shared four year journey with MiniDonks, our aim is that the human team will have the skills and expertise to evaluate the impact of their work in a 100% independent and sustainable way.
Education & Learning
From May 25-Dec 26, we’re working, alongside TMC, as research and evaluation partners for Creative Connections, hosted by Departments for Education in both Ireland and Northern Ireland as part of the ‘Shared Island’ initiative.
Our research focus is evidencing how creative approaches across primary, secondary and SEN schools supports teaching & learning, impacts young people’s personal, social and emotional competencies, and strengthens the cross-border relationship.
“Jo helped us to understand much more about what is actually going on beneath the surface in our musical interactions with children and families. By understand more, we can practice and advocate with greater confidence and clarity.”
Jo White, Wishing Well Programme Manager