Creative evaluation and storytelling for Wandsworth Arts Fringe

Wandsworth Arts Fringe bursts into life for 17 brilliant days each June, shaking up South West London with an eclectic programme of arts & culture that thrills, moves and inspires audiences from across the city. Since 2010, WAF has brought together hundreds of creatives in a bold and boundary-pushing annual line-up of cutting-edge theatre and comedy, exquisite music concerts, art exhibitions, experimental performance art, outdoor art extravaganzas, and everything in between, taking place across the borough. We were delighted to work with the inspiring WAF team, helping to tell the story of WAF23 as part of Wandsworth’s Borough of Culture bid, and providing comprehensive research and evaluation support. And again for WAF 2024. Responding to the brief to provide capacity and skills sharing to artists and creatives in evaluation, as well as extra feet on the ground during the fringe, our research and evaluation work included: working collaboratively with the team and partners to develop an evaluation framework and theory of change for the festival delivering evaluation support and training sessions to artists and creatives (our slides and resources from our skills-sharing sessions are available to view as a toolkit here) co-ordinating comprehensive audience research and evaluation activity during the fringe co-ordinating observational feedback and data collection face-to-face audience surveying and interviewing at events impact journalism and vox pops with audiences and artists a Talkaoke event in collaboration with The People Speak to bring people together around the table of chat to discuss art, culture, dance and everything else, as part of the Royal Academy of Dance’s Magic of Dance community day (see pictures here and film here) co-ordinating film and video storytelling in collaboration with Caroline Wilson and UndrLdn Social value and economic impact analysis Artist case studies Audience development plan We are grateful to Huda Awan for her solutions journalism support on this project. Collaborating with The People Speak and Caroline Wilson and UndrLdn on this project was also brilliant in bringing added layers of creative engagement, while community researcher and coach Ken Hettiarachi, helped us listen to local audiences and collect surveys. Our research and insight helped the WAF team develop the fringe model and build capacity in evaluation. The team and WAF creatives have highly valued the support. “We really enjoyed and benefitted from our partnership with Live Projects and were impressed by the level of detail and quality of work Chris and the team provided throughout the planning phases, during Wandsworth Arts Fringe festival itself and resultant evaluation materials produced. Communication with Chris and the team was straight forward and clear, effective – and it is evident in the high -quality Impact Report they produced that the team really understood our needs as a festival, on balance with our role as a local authority service and delivery team. Overall we felt each area we discussed during the highly effective planning process was listened to and covered throughout the process and felt we received a genuinely bespoke service. We’d relish the opportunity to work with this fantastic organisation in the future.” ~ Wandsworth Arts Fringe Team, Wandsworth Arts Fringe Producer – Cath Mattos, Arts and Culture Programme and Partnerships Manager – Lucy Murray