Seeking an Evaluator for Working Together, deadline 16 October

Working Together Evaluation Brief

Fee: £20,000 including VAT and expenses

Deadline: Monday 16th October, 12noon

Timeline: November 2023–August 2025

You can download this information as a pdf here or listen to an audio version here

The Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance is seeking an evaluator for Working Together, a partnership project with GEM to support 6 heritage/museum sites to develop their work with health and wellbeing.

See this page for general information on the Working Together programme.

1. Context

CHWA is the national membership organisation for creative heath for England. (We use ‘creative health’ to mean any creative or cultural activity that supports health and/or wellbeing.) GEM is the sector-support organisation for learning in museums. GEM is a UK wide organisation supporting museums and heritage organisations of all sizes to enable people to engage through learning.

Together we are working with 6 museums or heritage organisations to support them to build their strategic capacity for health and wellbeing work.

2. Evaluation Aims

We would like to assess the project against the project aims below. We would also like this evaluation to be shared widely with the sector in accessible, creative formats.

Short to medium term  

  • Build teams within museums / heritage sites who will receive specialist training in health and wellbeing – and in particular how to respond to health inequalities; these teams will include senior staff and volunteers as well as education officers or equivalent
  • Deliver six short-term ‘pilot’ projects which will
    • catalyse partnership with local health / social care providers and commissioners
    • reach a wider range of people through prioritising health and wellbeing
  • Explore with these teams how to make health/wellbeing work sustainable within their institutions  
  • Create institutional levers for change (e.g. inclusion of health and wellbeing in business plans)

Long-term

  • Improve the health and wellbeing of a wider range of people engaging with heritage organisations
  • Create more opportunities for people at the sharp end of health inequalities to engage with museums
  • Build the heritage sector’s confidence for partnership with
    • health and social care sectors
    • people lived experience of poor health and wellbeing

We aim to undertake extensive dissemination of the evaluation and use the project findings as a basis for future training and programmes of work, within both organisations.

3. Methodology

We are open to proposals for evaluation methodologies from the evaluator.

 

We want the evaluation to be coproduced by the partner organisations, and to ensure too that ethical guidance including around anonymity, consent and confidentiality, informs the process.

 

Following the Creative Health Quality Framework’s recommendations, we would like the evaluation to

  • Identify opportunities for reflection, learning and professional development throughout the development and delivery process, as well as at the end of the project.
  • Prioritise learning over monitoring, and understanding over judgement.
  • Use creative approaches to reflection to support insight and learning.
  • Support participants and practitioners to reflect and learn from their experience and have a voice in the evaluation.

6. Proposed Timescale

November 2023                         Evaluator Appointed

Dec 2023-April 2025                  Data gathering and analysis (with mid-point review mid-2024)

August 2025                             Final Report completed

7. Access

This is a remote-working freelance role. We are ready to adapt our working processes in discussion with applicants; please let us know about any access needs we can support. 

8. Fee and payments

The fee is a total of £20,000 (including VAT where applicable) which will be payable in instalments by agreement upon receipt of invoice. The fee is the total amount available for this work and so must include all time, materials, costs and other expenses incurred.

9. Hours of work

This is an output-based contract but as a guide this might include an average of 3 days of work per month on this project.

10. Skills and experience

We always aim to be collaborative; caring; inclusive; and committed to positive social change. These are our values as an organisation and it’s essential you feel comfortable with this, and that you feel you can work in this way throughout the contract. We also consider the following criteria to be essential for this role:

The applicant/s should be

  • An experienced evaluator
  • Experienced in working with heritage, health and wellbeing
  • Experienced in working proactively to ensure a representative range of voices are heard in evaluation processes 
  • Experienced in co-producing creative and engaging evaluation methodologies
  • A good communicator
  • Comfortable working independently, as well as collaboratively
  • A lateral thinker 

We are always interested in hearing about transferable skills as well as direct experience.

10. Submission information

We would like to receive a CV, and a brief covering statement explaining why you would like to do this piece of work, and how you might achieve what we’ve set out above, by Monday 16 October, 12noon. 

The covering information can be submitted as an email, Word document or pdf. Alternatively we can also receive this as an audio or video recording, as you prefer. We will interview on Friday 27 October. When you apply, please confirm whether you are available for an online conversation on this day. If you can’t make it, we will find another mutually convenient time.

Please tell us about any access needs we can meet to support your application process. We’d also appreciate it if you could click on this link and fill out this Equality, Diversity & Representation form when you apply. This is anonymous and we will not connect it with your application, but it helps us assess whether we are reaching a wide pool of candidates. If the link doesn’t work for you let us know and we will find an alternative.

We are committed to ensuring our organisation is as diverse and representative as possible. We particularly want to encourage applications from people identifying with any of the protected characteristics as defined in the 2010 Equality Act, or who are from less affluent socioeconomic backgrounds.

Email: [email protected]

 

10. Further information

Please contact [email protected] for further information or to discuss this role.