Starting from values: evaluating intangible legacies of community-university research partnerships

The aim of this research was to co-explore, co-develop and co-generate a values-based approach for understanding and evaluating ‘intangible’ achievements and legacies of projects. In this way, we also aimed to identify, and legitimise, different `ways of knowing’ that are not usually recognised in traditional project evaluations.

The project had the following specific objectives:

• To explore ways in which creative and arts-based approaches can open up delicate spaces for communication, making it easier for people to talk about their values and tacit knowledge
• To co-develop loose frameworks for evaluating intangible legacies of wider projects supported by the AHRC Connected Communities (CC) funding stream, and for eight specific projects in particular
• To build participants’ capacity to contribute meaningfully to design-based activities within the project, and their ability to design evaluations across many CC projects
• To similarly explore the influence of at least two of these CC projects in wider arenas
• To contribute to arts and humanities scholarship in authority and voice, and thus to wider conversations about the value of co-research approaches.

This was a complex, multi-layered project whose findings and impacts could be understood on several levels:

Learning about different ways of eliciting values

The Starting from Values project team has designed a variety of different tools and methods for helping people to understand what their values are, as a first step towards values-focused evaluations. These include, among others, mind-mapping using pen and paper and/or MindGenius software; designing a ‘Values and Goals’ mapping chart made of foldable felt; developing digital collaboration tools for co-creating values statements; and using individual or collective drawing as a starting point for reflection.

Learning how to link values, measurable indicators, and legacies

We have developed sets of prompts that can be used by project groups to help them develop their own measurable indicators, and then collect data on these indicators in order to understand their legacies better. When used after the values elicitation step, the prompts can inspire people with new ideas that they hadn’t previously thought of.

Data on project legacies themselves

The main project strand brought together partners from two Connected Communities projects: The Authority Research Network and Scaling-Up Co-Design. Their legacies included, among many others:

• deep and sustained friendship networks, which give researchers a safe space in which to test out highly creative or ‘risky’ ideas;
• renewed energy, helping people and organisations to continue with activities that would otherwise have been abandoned;
• increased self-esteem and confidence, enabling people to ‘scale up’ their vision, overcome their fears and aim for more ambitious goals;
• greater recognition of skills and expertise, giving people and organisations more credibility (e.g. for funders).

Learning about how to facilitate the values workshops

Following the initial phase of work with the two projects described above, Community Co-Investigators were empowered to carry out the values workshops themselves, initially in their own organisations and then (in some cases) within the context of other AHRC Connected Communities projects.