Queering Impact Evaluation by Dr Chloe Asker
This blog post explores the process of queering impact evaluation for Queer Natures.
But, first, what actually is impact? And how do we evaluate it?
Impact is the social, economic, or environmental changes that result from a particular intervention. In Queer Natures, we’re interested in changes that are created or influenced by the artist residencies and Ina’s research. Impact evaluation are the methods to measure or assess the social, economic, or environmental changes that result from a particular intervention. These methods can be qualitative or quantitative in nature.
Why is impact evaluation important?
Impact has become an increasingly important dimension in how research and the arts are funded and evaluated. Measuring impact allows individuals, groups, and organisations to evidence their social, cultural, and economic value to wider society.
Research funding from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI, the main funders of UK academic research) is increasingly dependent on the quantity and quality of research impact. Academics are thus tasked with demonstrating, measuring, and evaluating the types of impact that their projects are creating (source). Impact evaluation also means that we demonstrate that funding artists as part of academic research makes sense – so that other teams can do the same.
A similar story can be told about the arts and culture sector, where impact evaluation has become essential to attract funding. In a climate of financial scarcity (with constrained resources and funding cuts impacted by decades of Conservative austerity), evidencing the value of an arts or cultural project has become critically important to the survival of projects and organisations (source).
Problems with evaluation
However, the way that impact is understood and measured tends to be very narrow, and unreflective of the diverse approaches to research and the arts. A great focus of impact evaluation has been to produce ‘hard outcomes’ that are quantifiable and objective, which often omit the important social, emotional, experiential outcomes for individuals, communities, and organisations.
Additionally, the narrow approach to measuring impact can limit it as a fixed, concrete phenomenon that one stakeholder does to another. Mapping alternative, or queer, impact is important as it recognises that impact involves deep co-production that is a process involving a gradual, porous, and diffuse series of changes undertaken collaboratively.
Towards a queer approach
We queer things when we resist “regimes of the normal” (Warner, 1999)
Queer Natures is seeking to map an alternative approach to impact through questioning the categories and assumptions of impact evaluation. Impact evaluation will focus on three main areas of the project: 1) Ina’s interdisciplinary research, 2) artist progression and practice, and 3) wider communities and partners (the people we are working with).
To further understand how impact evaluation for these contexts will operate, Chloe has brought together a set of practices and values that will guide the project’s approach:
- Co-production (working collaboratively)
Working in a way that prioritises community integration, through ‘community-based participatory research (CBPR)’ approaches, can support the creation of collaborative research knowledge that is respectful, appropriate, and honouring the needs and wishes of the community (see source for more).
- Critical reflection (challenging assumptions)
As a project, we are committed to engaging in difficult questions regarding the impact of our work. Having a reflective practice is important. This might include taking reflective notes to think through power relations, engaging in conversations to discuss issues reflectively.
Critical reflection is also a practice of developing sensitivity and capacities for discomfort. Engaging with somatic, embodied, and/or artistic practices can support this. For example, yoga or meditation can be a useful space to process and develop emotional sensitivity. Alternatively, engaging in artistic practice (e.g. collage, zine-making, drawing, clay, junk journaling etc.) can assist with processing and reflection.
- Holistic (whole systems approach)
This dimension recognises that changes that take place during and after the project may not be linear, one-way, or quantifiable. Moreover, the impacts include a wide range of structural, social, cultural, economic, and environmental factors, alongside emotional and affective impacts that might be missed through a focus on ‘hard outcomes’.
- Transformational (making a difference)
This means that impact is a praxis – a collaborative process of critical reflection on reality in order to transform it. Thus, impact evaluation in this respect as a political dimension, in that it will provide evidence to support Queer and trans* projects in the future in a context of an increasingly hostile state.
Chloe aims to hold these practices and values together throughout the evaluation process, to critically reflect on the project and its impacts, but also the process of evaluation itself.