Since June this year Drake Music have been involved in an Arts Cohort run by Project Oracle. Now, you may be wondering what on earth that is, so did I at first.
Firstly the ‘Arts Cohort’ is basically a group of arts organisations that have come together to explore new and meaningful ways to evaluate our arts projects.
We are supported by Project Oracle who are a children and youth evidence hub that aims to improve outcomes for young people in London and elsewhere.
Project Oracle are really into evaluation, I mean they live and breathe it, non-stop, every day.
For most of us working in arts & education I know we can find evaluations frustrating at times, or an activity we all have to do to keep funders happy, but – for Drake Music – evaluation is about getting the projects right.
Meaningful evaluations allow us to make sure we are doing what we say we want to, and delivering to a high standard.
So, when the opportunity to be a part of the Arts Cohort came up in May we took it and decided to use it as a way to really help us hone our evaluation skills and look at how it can impact our work nationally.
The Cohort has been meeting regularly over the last few months and Drake Music have been developing a new evaluation pilot that we are currently testing out this term…. and guess what, the Project Oracle vibe is rubbing off.
I am the champion of evaluation here at DM HQ and I have also been writing about the experience of developing evaluation tools over on the Project Oracle blog – click here to read about the experience and find out more about this new approach to evaluation.
