Reflecting Value Centre for Cultural Value

We’re returning to season 3 of our podcast, Reflecting Value: Evaluation Principles in Practice, for a bonus episode!
In season 3, we’ve been exploring our co-created Evaluation Principles. Throughout the season, we’ve been checking in with cultural sector professionals, evaluators and academics about their experiences of using the Principles in their work, both as reflective prompts and practical tools.
In this bonus episode, we’re discussing transparency.
How can we be open with our learning and acknowledge its limitations? Should our evaluations be made available publicly rather than just to the stakeholders we originally had in mind? And who is transparency for? Can we really expect smaller, less powerful cultural organisations to be totally candid with their work in the face of the demands placed on them by funders and stakeholders?
In a conversation facilitated by freelance evaluator Dawn Cameron, we ask what it means to be truly transparent. 
Featuring Stella Kanu (CEO at Shakespeare’s Globe) and Ben Walmsley (Director of the Centre for Cultural Value), this episode explores the risks and benefits of sharing evaluations and talking openly about our work.
You can listen to Reflecting Value at Spotify, Apple Music or wherever you find your podcasts and don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe.
Referenced in this episode:
Impact 08 – Examining Liverpool’s experience as Capital of Culture
Dear Work, we need to talk by Jo Verrent
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
Paul Hamlyn Foundation
Here to Stay (evaluation report) and All Of Us (campaign)
Read a transcript of this episode here.

Hosted by Chuck Blue Lowry, this episode of Reflecting Value: Evaluation Principles in Practice explores rigour.
Keeping our evaluations rigorous is crucial if we want our findings to be accurate, giving us the best chance of learning from our activity and making meaningful changes to it.
But how do we make our evaluation rigorous? How do we identify the appropriate methods for our work, and apply them properly? How do we balance pure numbers with the human stories that come out of evaluation?
Join us as we ask our guests about identifying methods, sticking to the evidence and balancing analysis with description. We'll wade into the age old debate - "quantitative or qualitative data?" - and discuss how the two can be properly combined into a mixed methods approach.
You can listen to Reflecting Value at Spotify, Apple Music or wherever you find your podcasts and don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe.

Hosted by Chuck Blue Lowry, this episode of Reflecting Value: Evaluation Principles in Practice explores proportionality.
Proportionality involves doing less - and doing it better. It involves editing yourself down and knowing what you need out of an evaluation, and what you don’t. And it also involves being selective and saying no when you might not be best placed to do an evaluation.
In this episode, we also find out that proportionality is really hard to implement. To be proportionate, we have to think about our own role in an evaluation - whether we are a cultural manager, practitioner, evaluator or funder.
Join us as we talk about overkill, adapting methods in face of changing circumstances and regenerative practice.
You can listen to Reflecting Value at Spotify, Apple Music or wherever you find your podcasts and don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe.

Hosted by Stephen Welsh, this episode of Reflecting Value: Evaluation Principles in Practice explores the role of empathy in evaluation.
One of the 'people-centred' Evaluation Principles, empathy can be elusive. It can be hard to talk about it practically. But if we want to make evaluation count, we have to make it count for everyone.
What steps can we take to be more understanding evaluators? How can we create a safe evaluation environment - one that can bring in missing voices with unique opinions? And how can we overcome our own expectations of an evaluation so that it really gives back to our audiences and participants?
Join us as we discuss listening, failure and 'hanging out' - and what they all have to do with empathy in evaluation.
This episode features conversations with Alex de Little (http://www.alexdelittle.com/), Morvern Cunningham (https://twitter.com/morvc) and Rising Arts Agency (https://rising.org.uk/).
Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to Reflecting Value, wherever you get your podcasts.
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It's been two years since the Centre for Cultural Value launched the co-created Evaluation Principles – responding to industry-wide demand for support with evaluation in the cultural sector. So we wanted to check in.
The third season of the Centre for Cultural Value's podcast, Reflecting Value: Evaluation Principles in Practice, features three new episodes exploring the ways cultural sector professionals have applied the Evaluation Principles.
Hosted by Stephen Welsh and Chuck Blue Lowry, we'll be discussing how the Principles can be used across the cultural sector in practical and beneficial ways. 
We'll also talk to our guests about the challenges of evaluation - and the ways the Principles can provide a practical lens for learning and implementing change.
Join us for season three of Reflecting Value, releasing weekly in July 2023.
To find out more about Reflecting Value: Evaluation Principles in Practice, visit: https://www.culturalvalue.org.uk/reflecting-value/
Edited in house by Robin Smith

Created in partnership with National Theatre of Scotland
This episode is hosted by Lewis Hetherington of National Theatre of Scotland who brings together six people who have been participants in creative work during the pandemic. The group explores their experiences of taking part in creative activity during the pandemic, and the positive impacts it had on them while in lockdown.
Guests
Lewis Hetherington (National Theatre of Scotland) – host
Stewart Gow and Carrie Bates – Coming Back Out Ball
Charlotte Armitage and Kenneth Murray – Holding, Holding On
Jaqui Smyth and Peter Sproul – Non Optimum
With thanks to National Theatre of Scotland partners:
Coming Back Out BallA National Theatre of Scotland and All The Queens Men co-production, in partnership with Eden Court and Luminate in association with Glasgow City Council. 
Holding/ Holding OnPresented by National Theatre of Scotland as part of Care in Contemporary Scotland – A Creative Enquiry, written by Nicola McCartney 
Non Optimum: When It’s Safe To Do SoPresented by National Theatre of Scotland as part of Care in Contemporary Scotland – A Creative Enquiry, created by Lucy Gaizely/21Common 
We would love to hear what you thought about the episode – please share your thoughts on Twitter using #ReflectingValue
You can listen to Reflecting Value at Spotify, Apple Music or wherever you find your podcasts and don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe.
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Get in touch at ccv@leeds.ac.uk