Culture, Arts and Refugees

Monitoring & Evaluation

PLN participant presenting results from a working group

Another key issue to address when exploring sustainability for Refugee Arts organisations and their work with refugees and asylum seekers, is monitoring the changes that a specific project has in people’s lives, as well as evaluating project practices, its methods and outcomes.

M&E – as it is called – gathers information that is relevant to understand the immediate results of the programmes and activities that had taken place, assessing the impact of a project in a specific community. The reasons behind M&E practices can be varied, its results can inform about the effectiveness of a project that can: [1]

‘ensure a degree of accountability of the organisation’,
help demonstrate the need for support to funders and policymakers,
help increase the value of the organisation’s work,
provide useful information to be shared with others in the sector, and
provide statistics, methods and practices that may ‘inform and/or change policy’.

The Peer Leadership Network on Culture, Arts and Refugees participants agreed that the main weakness in monitoring and evaluating cultural projects with refugee and migrant communities was the tools used, as not all were able to reflect the subtleties of participatory art work and give evidence of soft outcomes.

Defined as outcomes that respond to qualitative information – such as developing interpersonal skills or increasing self confidence – soft outcomes are more problematic to evidence than hard outcomes which relate to quantitative data. As defined by a government report [2] on the subject, soft outcomes can be defined as:

Attitudinal skills: attitudinal skills includes self-esteem, positive regard for others, taking responsibility for own lives, confidence, motivation, attitude, self-awareness, reduced depression/anxiety, and aspirations;

Life skills: life skills outcomes comprise social skills, attendance, time-keeping, personal presentation, personal hygiene, and relevant conversation, and

Transferable skills: transferable skills include such factors as working in groups/teams, problem-solving, questioning, evaluating, initiative, language skills, and communication.

The group shared information on M&E tools for good practice and began a resource on tools used according to specific needs for the future. Some issues the group consider when assessing impact of refugee arts projects are:

cultural organisations working with refugees and migrant communities are diverse in nature, size and context and differ in capacity and approaches to the work;
projects that use participatory methodologies with their stakeholders and their target community are not bound off difficulties, there are challenges in how different voices are heard and validated and the way the arts practitioner engages and manages participation;
if change happens during the process of a project and after it is finished, it cannot be attributed solely to the organisation’s work and project. There are many forces and factors that contribute to that change;
the reasons behind deciding on how to approach a project, how to monitor it and evaluate it, are being increasingly influenced by policy and advocacy issues.

For more information on monitoring and evaluation tools and practices in the Refugee Arts sector, please contact participants of the Peer Leadership Network on Culture, Arts and Refugees.

Some resources of interest are:

ICAR, the Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees, based at City University (http://www.icar.org.uk/),
Refugee Council (http://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/), and
Refugee Action (http://www.refugee-action.org.uk/)

Footnotes

[1] J. Chapman & A. Mancini (2008), Impact assessment: Drivers, dilemmas and deliberations, Sightsavers International.
[2] ECOTEC, (1998), Soft Indicators: Demonstrating Progress and recognising Achievement, ESF Employer Initiative Support Unit, http://www.employment.ecotec.co.uk/download/soft.pdf