Client again Jazz North

We are delighted to be working with Jazz North again. Back in 2018 we worked together evaluating their 'northern line' programme which was for unsigned new jazz artists and groups. At the time we recommended a back to basics focus, teaching bands how to run the business side of jazz. We enjoyed our time together.

Out of the blue, Jazz North called us in March explaining they had a new project and they wanted to understand the impact in a bit more depth. This is Jazz Camp for Girls. Working with young women, aged as young as 8 years old, Jazz North is trying hard to address gender stereotypes and barriers.

We are delighted to be the evaluation partner on the programme, and look forward to understanding how we can stop jazz being a man's world!

You can see more about Jazz North here. Jazz North is an Arts Council funded National Portfolio Organisation and is the jazz development agency for the north of England.

How are we coping with Coronavirus? 21 statistics around our health and wellbeing from the first week of lockdown. Now updated to include week 2 and week 3.

The world is changing. Here in the UK we are being asked to stay at home, to work from home, and to minimise our movement and travel down to the necessities. We are being asked this to ease pressure on the NHS, to stop the spread of the virus and to save lives.

It's a strange new world, and we wanted to see if we could understand how people are coping. Well, as you all know, we measure wellbeing regularly. So we did a small survey in our local area, Barnoldswick and nearby to see how people are doing.

Week 2 includes a few more further flung people, as people have shared the survey to friends and family across the UK. This was updated on Friday 3rd April and is shown in blue.  

On Friday 10th April, we added the Week 3 results in and they are shown in purple. 

On Friday 8th May we carried out Week 7 analysis, this is shown in green. 

Here are the results.

• 16% of everyone have been asked to stay at home for 12 weeks, 84% have not
• Week 2: 12% of everyone have been asked to stay at home for 12 weeks, 88% have not
• Week 3: 21% of everyone have been asked to stay at home for 12 weeks, 79% have not
• Week 7: 10% of everyone have been asked to stay at home for 12 weeks, 90% have not

• 5% work in the NHS, and a further 11% had close friends or family who worked for the NHS
• Week 2: 5% work in the NHS, and a further 10% had close friends or family who worked for the NHS
• Week 3: 5% work in the NHS, and a further 13% had close friends or family who worked for the NHS
• Week 7 : 8% work in the NHS, and a further 10% had close friends or family who worked for the NHS

• 23% were considered key workers and continued to work, and a further 45% had close friends and family members who were continuing to work
• Week 2: 23% were considered key workers and continued to work, and a further 38% had close friends and family members who were continuing to work. This could mean more people are off work ill at the moment. 
• Week 3: 20% were considered key workers and continued to work, and a further 36% had close friends and family members who were continuing to work. This probably does mean more people are off work ill at the moment. 
• Week 7: 33% were considered key workers and continued to work, and a further 37% had close friends and family members who were continuing to work. 

We asked the statement; how anxious do you feel for yourself and your family?

The average score was 6, but there was a huge range of answers here. 20% were very concerned, scoring 10/10 for anxiety.

18 reasons to love Winter; a creative evaluation of wellbeing

72 seasons is a year-long research project, designed by Kirsty Rose Parker (founder & director of The Evaluator), to measure how being more connected to nature makes us feel. We do that through working with a team of volunteer seasonal seekers. We have planned a whole year - 2020 - where the seasons change every 4 or 5 days, originally inspired by the ancient natural calendar in Japan.

Our seasonal seekers agree to complete health and wellbeing research surveys and then they start their adventure. Trying to notice the changes in nature, we are building a community around Pendle Hill who look a little bit closer, a little bit more often, even just from their gardens and windows as the world changes. We had never heard of Coronavirus when this project began on 1st January 2020; but despite the changes in our daily lives and massive upheavals in our wellbeing, nature soldiers on, and so do we.

Here we share the results of the nature we have spotted. 180 people began this journey with us, a few have left and a few have since joined. We are a community that ebbs and flows, and people can choose how involved they get.

In 2020, we changed the season 'Winter' into 18 smaller seasons and asked our seasonal seekers to go out and about as much as they normally would, and see what they spotted.

The beautiful seasonal illustrations are by local artist, Cath Ford. You can check more of her work out here. Cath lives in Blackburn and she knows the nature we know. She is a very talented artist and we feel very lucky to be working with her.

Season; 1 - 4 January: The Earth is Unyielding 

Recommissioned for Positive Progressions

We announce new partnerships here, and share some evaluation examples, but we rarely share the details of the project we complete. It's time to rectify this.

Positive Progressions is one of our earliest clients and we are still working together. Positive Progressions is run by Craven College, who are based in Yorkshire and is all about getting families who are far away from the labour market back into work. They are co-financed by the National Lottery Community Fund and the European Social Fund and are a Building Better Opportunities (BBO) project.

As their evaluation provider, in the beginning we worked with them to understand the work they were doing and what happened day to day in their project. We looked at the data they had to collect for funders, and spoke to the staff.  The project itself is a 1:1 keyworker support model, which is incredibly flexible. Because staff work so intensively with participants, they get to know them really well. We use that, and get the staff to carry out keyworker assessments.

Overall we have created measurement tools which capture changes in; wellbeing, confidence, resilience and ‘work-readiness’ over time. We chose this list, as these are the aims of the project. We regularly analyse all the data and present it to the wider team at partnership meetings. We can show the project is making an impact. We even can predict when people are nearing the end of their time in the project.

Our numerical information has uncovered unknown issues, for example, that people with disabilities are less likely to cross the final hurdle and get a job. This has helped the project team to focus their time and understanding on supporting disabled participants more.

We have provided bespoke quantitative measurement tools including ‘The Journey Back to Work Road Map’ and the ‘Rose Parker Resilience Scale’ which are very quick and easy for the team to implement and require no additional staff time.

Positive Progressions have consistently been identified as one of the leading examples of good practice in evaluation for all BBO projects across the North of England.

We presented the bespoke findings for this project at a high-profile seminar of good evaluation practice at Newcastle Football Club in May 2019. We were the only project selected to share evaluation good practice!

In September 2019 we were recommissioned to continue to provide their evaluation for the next two years. Working together again, we uncovered what they wanted out of a future evaluation. We decided to continue to use the existing methods and monitor the disability situation and to develop a new arm for evaluation to measure longer term impact. We are currently carrying out a ‘six months later’ impact analysis for this project and as part of that work we are starting to financially proxy the lifetime savings of the project in terms of a public purse.

“The Evaluator has been integral; supporting Craven College to really demonstrate  the impact of Positive Progressions to funders both current and future. From the outset they have developed and adapted methods of collecting data and evidencing impact throughout, this has ensured we can really showcase the success of the project but also to help us constantly improve our practice.” Pippa Syers, Community and Projects Manager.

Hopefully, that will have explained a bit more about what an evaluation partnership can look like. As a firm trying to transform evaluation; we are really trying to make sure it enhances our clients work, and helps them to make data-driven-decisions.

Spring in the 72 Seasons

Would you like to come on an adventure in nature with us? One which can all be done from home?

If the answer is yes, please sign up for Spring in our 72 Seasons project, where we measure your changes in health and wellbeing, while exploring the changes in nature.

In this project there is a new season every 4 or 5 days and we ask you to try and notice the new season. You will be asked to complete health and wellbeing surveys at the beginning and end and short reports as to what you have noticed. In total it takes about 30 minutes of your time over the whole season.

Our current Winter seasonal seekers have told us they feel closer to nature and it's made them look more.

The world is chaotic and overwhelming right now, and many people are stuck at home and anxious. We get that. But nature doesn't. Why not see if this project can help you to get through difficult times?

Sign up here http://eepurl.com/gPQTyj

This project is part of the Pendle Hill Landscape Partnership series of projects. You can see further details here.