S3 Ep 4: Transparency

Reflecting 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.