Time to reflect
Gerri Moriarty outlines self evaluation and reflective practice for those organisations taking part in Dance Included
For the past two years, Helen Jermyn and I have collaborated on a research project for Arts Council England entitled 'Addressing Social Exclusion'. This is a project that has focused on the evaluation and self-evaluation practices of arts organisations working in the context of social exclusion (1). Unfortunately, no dance organisations were included in the 25 organisations originally selected to participate in this project. So I was delighted when the Dance Department of the Arts Council of England decided to run its own, smaller-scale project, entitled 'Dance Included', with six selected dance organisations and to ask Helen and I to continue with our roles of (respectively) external evaluator and supporter of self evaluation practice. This article records some of my early reflections on the project.
How do we evidence 'pride in achievement of self and group?', which is one of our declared outcomes? How do we ensure adequate confidentiality if we need to consider participants past criminal/at risk records? How do we make the best use of our limited additional resources for this piece of evaluation work?
The first phase of Dance Included has been characterised by a plethora of questions - Reg Revans, the founder of Action Learning would be proud of the process. Questions have often yielded further, more complex questions and there has always been a point when organisations have had to decide that enough was enough and that an evaluation plan had to be decided and committed to paper. The beauty of a research project, as I've kept reiterating, is that if an element in the evaluation plan really does not work, despite the very best endeavours of all concerned, we can admit that, analyse the difficulties, learn from our mistakes. It is a liberating idea.
This is an illustration of my role in 'Dance Included', as I see it. The dance organisations' primary purpose is to deliver an excellent dance project for participants and partner organisations. They have a secondary aim, which as I interpret it, is to ensure that their reputation for delivering good quality work, is maintained and enhanced. My aim is to ensure that the organisations make full use of the rare opportunity of a research project to learn more about what works for them in terms of self evaluation and what, therefore, they would like to incorporate into their long-term organisational processes.
So, for example, although The Place and Cardboard Citizens are very aware that, in research terms, the collaboration between two organisations with such different areas of experience and expertise is as interesting as the actual project, it can be useful to work with a detached outsider to identify just what the most important issues in the partnership have been. At Teeside Dance Initiative, I will be particularly interested to see how their proposals to use on-line technology to support evaluation journals will work out and whether it's the kind of initiative from which other organisations could learn. Attik Dance and I have exchanged several e-mails in which we have looked at the need to ensure that participants (who have, after all, come to experience the joys of dance) do not end up feeling like the worst kind of sociological guinea-pig.
In a sense, putting aside a couple of hours to meet with me, or taking the time to word an e-mail and read a reply gives a hard-pressed administrator or dance worker the excuse to take the reflective time which is so often denied due to the pressure of the work. They are, after all, ' working with the consultant from the Arts Council'! I wonder whether some kind of external support with self evaluation - whether that is peer support, mentor support or consultancy support - is worth considering as a way of giving a structured framework to reflective time?
As for me - I am enjoying it thoroughly. I love working with dancers (I speak as a drama practitioner). I love their passion and their enthusiasm and their ability to deal with high levels of complexity. These qualities are true of all excellent art-form practitioners; it is just that I can see it even more clearly when it is not my own art-form I am looking at. Because I have worked as a practitioner with dancers (for example with the Indian choreographer Astad Deboo, with JABADAO and with Adugna Community Dance Company in Ethiopia), I have a basic understanding of the issues and problems. I really am excited by the ambition and reach of the projects and I hope this comes over when I'm working with the organisations.
We are still at an early stage with Dance Included. In Phase Two, I hope to re-visit those companies who've said they would find it useful to have the space and time to reflect on their self evaluation processes with an external 'friend'. I have no doubt there will be many important lessons to share, at another point, with the dance community.
Gerri Moriarty is a freelance drama worker and arts consultant and can be contacted at gerri@moriarty.prestel.co.uk
1. 'Sharing Practice', my report on the self evaluation strand of this work, will be available shortly on www.artscouncil.org.uk
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