When measuring academic achievements, tests and exams provide a clear guide to how well a young person is doing, but how do you chart their personal and social development or levels of emotional literacy and resilience?

We instinctively know from years of experience and anecdotal evidence that through the arts young people are able to learn to work with others, build confidence, share ideas and build resilience. It becomes ok to get something wrong, to learn from it and try again.

But valuable as it is, this kind of evidence is not enough. We want to measure and document the impact of the Otherwise Creative programme on the young people taking part. So darts’ artists have developed a range of different tools to gather evidence of this journey.

The starting point

The experience of taking part in an arts session – the ability to take part and take risks in front of their peers will be different for each young person and will be connected to their own experience of education, arts activities, adults etc.

It’s vital to have some information about each participant before the sessions begin. This doesn’t result in limiting assumptions being placed on individuals but rather enables the artist to begin to understand what baggage they are bringing with them… Finding out about situations they struggle with, what they enjoy and any issues they may have with literacy or other members of the group help the artist tailor sessions appropriately.

To gather this information, artists work closely with staff at Pupil Referral Units (PRU) to complete an ‘Individual Learning Plan’. Each plan includes a specific target for the young person to work towards and this forms the starting point to measure their progress in arts sessions.

The ongoing measure

darts has developed a tool called the Engagement Matrix which plots each participant’s journey from disengagement, through curiosity and involvement to acceptance and success. 

PRU staff and artists observe each young person during a sessions and record details of behaviour with evidence to support it. This is then matched to the Engagement Matrix.

The evaluation

At the end of the project we are able to analyse the pattern of engagement for each young person. Did they become more disengaged when working with a new art form they had little confidence in? Did they show more positive behaviours when given additional responsibility by the artist in session?

All of this information means we are able to document and evidence the young person’s personal and social development and then share this data easily with each PRU.

In the academic year 2011-12 we will also be gathering PASS data from centres to provide an insight into what each young person thinks about their abilities so that we can further tailor workshop sessions in response.