Practical Session
On Monday July 20th we had a full day meeting with two guest session leaders both from Artlift, to give us further information about the way their Arts on Prescription programme is delivered.
PRINTMAKING
In the morning Nichola White ran a practical printmaking session with us. This gave us a chance to be on the receiving end of a workshop and get out hands mucky. The activity Nichola ran was simple yet effective and accessible, there wasn’t much room for failure. We all absorbed ourselves into the activity and came away feeling proud of what we had achieved.
We made layered mono-prints starting with black and white and moving into colour, simply by applying ink to our plates and then removing it again with various objects to create marks. We then moved on to using leaves, netting and other objects to create negative space and more texture within our prints.
RESEARCH AND EVALUATION
In the afternoon the referrals officer for Artlift, Brenda Read-Brown spoke to us about the importance of research and evaluation.
What evidence is already out there?
Brenda began by quoting some other Arts on Prescription projects that have published successful evaluations of their work:
City Arts in Nottingham: good qualitative data
Arts and Minds in Cambridge: Good Quantitative data
Time Being on the Isle of Man.
Artlift’s research show “significant improvement at a lower cost than other intervention”
Why Evaluate?
Funders insist
To Improve practice
Morally right to evidence the money is spent wisely – often charitable funds or tax payers funds.
When to Begin?
Evaluation should start as soon as possible. You begin with outlining your aims and objectives and then outline how you are going to measure your aims and objectives from the moment the project starts.
Where to begin?
The best place to start is by keeping good records that can be analysed later. The data that Artlift collect includes:
Register: who comes and how often do they attend.
Diversity information
Postcodes
Referrers information; quality of the referrals.
Statistical Information
All of this data collecting needs to adhere to the ‘Data Protection Act’, every organisation needs to have a policy and rules in place.
EVALUATION TOOLS
Quantitative
Warwick Edinburgh Wellbeing Scale (WENWEB) – used by Artlift.
PHQ9 measures depression – but Artlift find it too intrusive.
GAD7 measures anxiety.
All of these use scales that are used to measure both pre and post project scores.
Artlift’s first evaluation of about 200-250 participants found that there was:
‘90-95% likely improvement due to attending Artlift sessions’
Brenda noted to us to be careful with wording, you can’t say that you have done something for definite, all you can say is that the intervention is a ‘likely’ reason for the improvements.
Qualitative
Comments: The best way to collect qualitative data is to jot down spontaneous comments that come out of the participants.
Case Studies: pick certain participants and use their experience as evidence.
Focus Groups
Artist Diaries: encourage artists to keep diaries of their experiences including: what activities they ran, highlights, low points and problems.
Double Diamond Evaluation
Dr Simon Olpher carried out an evaluation that shows the financial benefits of Artlift projects. He found that:
‘participants were 30% less likely to visit a GP after attending the course.’
FORMS
The forms Artlift use to collect data from the participants are:
Before they start:
Pre WENWEB
Diversity
Consent for photo’s of work
After:
Post WENWEB
Satisfaction
Referral form
Brenda gave us all a copy of the Artlift referral form and went through it thoroughly with us. More about how to take part and a link to download the referral form can be found here: http://www.artlift.org/how-do-i-take-part/
The form acts as a risk assessment of the patient, as the referrer is saying that the patient is suitable for the course. In the 10 years Artlift has been running there has only been one incident that has needed a formal report.
When Brenda receives the referral forms she gives every participant an ID number that makes them anonymous. The university researchers receive information about the participant’s date of birth, gender and postcode. The artist’s receive the contact details and the referrer’s comments as password protected files. Brenda is the only person who can join up the information again, she keeps the full files for one full year.
Conclusion
As well as being the referral officer for Artlift, Brenda is also one of their artists delivering sessions on creative writing. She ended the day with a simple activity working in pairs where the words began to flow with humour and without any pressure.
The day was both informative and fun, we had an insight into being a participant on an Artlift workshop and learnt some very useful tips on evaluation and research.
