BACKGROUND

Oxford and Oxfordshire have a strong track record of individuals and organisations with excellent skills and experience delivering arts and cultural education for young people both inside and outside the school environment and curriculum. However, our challenge is to create a joined-up arts and cultural offer alongside the sharing of resources and knowledge to enable a consistent, coherent and sustainable high quality delivery of cultural education entitlement for children and young people.

The Partnership currently has funding from Artswork and Oxfordshire’s Contain Outbreak Management Fund (COMF) for ‘FEELING SAFE: YOUNG PEOPLE, WELL-BEING & THE ARTS’, a project to support young people’s mental health during recovery from Covid-19 lockdowns, and to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in this age group. Our overall aim is to support young people to improve their mental and physical health, following the difficulties created by the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns. To achieve this, partnerships will be extended to include organisations and agencies outside of the arts/cultural and education sectors and with young people themselves.
ABOUT THE ROLE: The programme is managed by a working group consisting of arts organisations, educational establishments and the six local authorities reporting to the City Council’s Youth Partnership Board. We are seeking to appoint a freelance EVALUATOR with experience and knowledge of evaluating the arts, education, and wellbeing. This person will be able to ‘hit the ground running’ and create a coherent, but dynamic evaluation plan that will measure the success and impact of the project.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• To design, develop and implement an evaluation framework to the measure the impact of the ‘Feeling Safe; Young people, Wellbeing & the Arts’ project, specifically measuring the impact of improved positive mental health.
• To work collaboratively with the project team to develop a methodology which is clear, concise and easy to communicate amongst multiple partners.
• To work collaboratively with the project team, partners and mental health and clinical services to support a tied-up evaluation approach. This will include aligning evaluation to existing frameworks which will be delivered in other streams of the project.
• To fully design, disseminate and collate evaluation materials, including the use of specialist wellbeing tools and report on changes amongst participants.
• To provide training for partners and support in use of evaluation tools and materials.
• To facilitate face-to-face or online evaluation events.
• To use an ethical approach, and draw upon previous work and good practice developed in the pilot (for example, using the storytelling evaluation methodology).
• To produce and submit multiple reports, including a mid-stage review to funders in March 2022 and final report for Artswork in Spring 2023. Reports will enable us to explain clearly and accurately the benefits of the programme to a broader range of stakeholders and funders across the arts, health and wellbeing.

We are looking for an experienced evaluator with a track record of creating evaluation frameworks and reports for projects with multiple partners (especially for projects focusing on arts and wellbeing). They will have a good experience of evaluating projects with children and young people, knowledge of Arts Award and Artsmark and up to date knowledge around current thinking and practice/methodology around Impact Measurement Tools.
FEE / CONTRACT: Up to a maximum of £10,000

Working flexibly to meet the requirements of the brief in specified time period (from December 2021 - Spring 2023), paid on agreed schedule over the period of the contract.
This work is offered as a freelance contract, for a fixed fee including VAT and all expenses. The appointed individual will be responsible for all tax, national insurance etc.

TO APPLY

For a full brief please email oxfordcep@gmail.com. Please send a letter of application with an outline of your approach, breakdown budget and two case studies of relevant work that you have previously undertaken. Please include your experience and suitability for the post along with a CV and two references. Applications should be submitted to Liz Fraser-Betts at oxfordcep@gmail.com by the deadline 1st December