Introduction
In July Clear Village hosted a collaborative workshop with 10 different European partners in the Human CIties network. The goal of the workshop was to co create a new methodology for impact measurement.
Too often impact measurement is insufficiently recorded due to a number of factors. The boundaries of what must be measured may be set by outside forces before the work is conducted leading to impact measurement which is too vague and detached from the work being carried out. We wanted to design a workshop to co-create an impact measurement toolkit remotely with our 10 european partners of SMOTIES. We believe greater success can be achieved if all partners are involved in the design of this process, creating a learning opportunity for those who are less familiar and an opportunity for those more experienced to share their skills.
The biggest challenge in the creation of this workshop was how to design a way to account for specific challenges and situations that we may face working with our unique rural communities. A way to predict and simulate these situations to design creative solutions before the project occurs. We pulled from the field of speculative design to come up with a fictional village and projects to base our impact measurement journeys on. This included three project strands, each designed to represent different projects, audiences and challenges.
We decided to design our workshop in Miro, inspired by a successful remote hack-a-thon we ran on the platform last year. We drafted in the expertise of Snootie Studios, an up and coming digital design studio based in Essex. They helped us bring the village to life with bespoke illustrations to represent the village and each unique project. The design of the workshop was inspired by the SMOTIES logo of abstract shapes connected by dotted lines, we used this to form a clear visual framework to apply our workshop activities to.
The Workshop
The workshop was split into three sections. The first was an introductory session to learn Miro and introduce the idea of impact methodology and activities around co creating a collective ethos of how and why we should assess impact. The second was applying these wider ideas to three unique speculative projects with the final section being an opportunity to come together, share our findings and have a more open discussion.
When the participants landed they were taken through some basic Miro controls and launched into an icebreaker activity to get to grip with the platform and put these skills to the test.
Each partner organisation followed a line to their designated coloured blob as designated by the branding guideline where they were asked to add sticky notes, draw, copy and paste and resize objects, all commands which they would need to utilise during the workshop.
Why Assess Impact?
The first workshop activity was designed to understand each partners perspective and motivations for assessing impact. The most popular options were to; aim for replication, improve effectiveness and to improve own practice. Interestingly the least popular options were to satisfy funders or show value for money. This tells us that many of the partners are frustrated by the aspect of impact measurement connected to reporting to external funders, but excited by viewing impact measurement as a way to effectively critically analyse the work we are carrying out and demonstrate how the successes can be replicated.
The activity also gave an opportunity for participants to share their own ideas, some of our favourites included:
- To make a network between similar cases all over Europe
- To define if the applied methodology and approach works can be used in other contexts and situations
- To effectively report on our work to external audiences
- To progress with activities in light of a long-term legacy and exit strategy
- To have fun (with statistics!)
Co-Creating Ethos
Building on from the previous activity, this next exercise was designed to co-create a shared ethos together, that we can keep in mind both during the workshop and the SMOTIES program as a whole. Just as the last exercise helped us to understand what might motivate and drive partners to want to engage, this exercise told us what values we share so we can co-create a methodology that all partners are excited to support.
There were some clear ethos that most partners agreed upon, the most popular being that the impact methodology should be participatory and should have a clear site specific, social impact. The social impact was more popular than spatial impact telling us that the impact the work has on the people is more important than the impact it has on the space, but whatever is done should clearly consider the specificities of the local area.
The activity also gave an opportunity for participants to share their own ideas, some of our favourites included:
- Radical Candor
- External expertise should be from someone somehow aware of the community (i.e. Perception of doing agriculture could be seen as something connected to a past period of poverty)
- Creating a bridge between design educated people and local people with other skills or professions
- Insights from case study: key to success of projects is anyone who is external should be aware of cultural differences we don’t expect
This activity led to an in-depth discussion to co-create four key ethos to guide our impact assessment both throughout the rest of the workshop and over the project as a whole, becoming a leading aspect of the Impact Methodology Toolkit that this workshop feeds into.
Some were clearly agreed upon and easy to implement, such as that it should be Participatory and focus on Social Impact whilst the rest were not as easy to agree upon. One of Which ws site sensitivity, now this is particularly interesting when it comes to impact measurement as too often our measurement falls into the trap of being too vague, especially one that will have to work over 20 vastly different countries and cultures. The risk of this vagueness is that what is unique about a project is not adequately recorded. Site Specificity reminds us to keep the smaller picture in hand, this was developed to be Sensitivity towards Site Specificity as this also encompasses an ethos of how to work with these rural communities in a way that understands and is sensitive to their situation and our role as outsiders. There was an extended discussion around how this site specificity is both physical and social.
The final ethos came from discussions around how best to bring in outside expertise without alienating the local people. We want people to have ownership and involvement in the work as it leads to a higher level of engagement. At the same time there is a lot of value in incorporating existing expertise from outside sources. An impact measurement can benefit from both the involvement of local people and outside expertise and will be most successful when they are able to be brought together harmoniously. Both the last two co- created ethos points are exciting and different to previous approaches in impact measurement and ones we can’t wait to expand further in the development of the Impact Methodology Toolkit.
This is the first part in a blog series expanding on the ideas of this workshop, next we will be taking an in depth look into the three speculative design projects that were explored through impact measurement in our fictional village and what that can tell us about how to design new ways to effectively conduct impact measurement.
