Tag Archives: Creative approaches

Summer!

Posted by: Priya Senroy on June 6, 2014 4:09 pm

Hello fellow readers…..yes summer is here and so is the season of evaluations for my programs.

One of the current programs I am coordinating in the community is a multi arts projects for youth with disabilities and evaluation has been challenging as the traditional survey, questionnaire and hasn’t really worked so I had had to think of creative approaches of evaluating them and that’s makes sense right-I have also started using them for my counselling session and have found them useful.  ABE or Art-based evaluation (ABE) uses creative activities such as visual arts, sound, photography, media arts, cartoons, movement, creative writing, to explore the impact of a project or program. Creative activities when combined with more traditional evaluation approaches, such as interviews and questionnaire, are an innovative and effective way to evaluate a program.

I have also combined things like Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) taking pictures at the end of the day and then stringing them with a simple like dislike symbol to accommodate and navigate clients with various communication, language and cognition barriers. There is not much out there in terms of resources on using creative approaches to evaluation and some approaches that I have been using can be found in this website:

http://www.artreachtoronto.ca/toolkits/the-goal-toolkits/creative-approaches-to-evaluation/

The process is tedious and requires time since it has to be group and needs specific but it is able to capture the evaluation process well and I would encourage practitioners out there to embrace the non traditional forms while evaluating their programs or sessions.




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