Program and Project Evaluation
Setting Objectives
Long before you start your project, setting objectives will likely be part of any funding request you make. Ask yourself and your partners:
- What is the driving reason for your project?
- What does it hope to achieve?
- Why are you doing this project?
Your response to these questions is your objective. It needs to be measurable. Often an objective is “to engage youth in arts programming”. How do you track this objective?
- Keep attendance records with the age of participants.
- Record their satisfaction with the workshops through observation, surveys and interviews.
- Track how often the same participant returns to the workshops.
If you do not keep accurate attendance records, or create surveys, you do not know if you met your objective.
Here are a few program objectives:
- Regular participation
- Participants make art
- Participants have a safe place
- Participants gain confidence in art-making
- Participants’ relationships with peers and family improve
- Participants feel more confident
- Build art programming capacity in community
- Engage artists in community
- Create a space to display and celebrate art and creative expression
Your objective can change with each collaboration, even within the same community. For example, in the first year, you may choose small objectives such as getting the community to attend on a regular basis. The second year, you want regular attendance and building of art skills. The objectives will change every year to challenge and grow the project and meet the needs of the community, artist and participants.