A key research question that all Creative People and Places programme must respond to is how to embed community voice across the programme. Arts Council England specificly reviews how CPPs ensure excellent high quality arts production, whilst remaining community led. This is often framed as ‘ensuring arts excellence and excellence in engagement’.

Culture Co-op has previously worked with the Co-operative College and Local CIC to review its governance structure (Culture Co-op Labs and Community Panels), as well as develop an Arts Excellence Framework between 2023-2024.

For the 2026-2029 programme, Culture Co-op would like to commission an External Evaluation team to:

1. Review the practical usefulness and effectiveness of the Arts Excellence Framework

2. Review and develop the Culture Co-op Lab and Consortium Governance Structure (currently meeting quarterly)

3. Conduct independent interviews with Cultural Pioneers assessing individual impact and to what extent power is shared across the Community Panels

Working closely with Co-Production Leads and Head of Engagement, the External Evaluator will coordinate and help assess the co-production of several events across the programme, including both pre and post reviews – encouraging community panels to use Quality Principles from the Art Excellence Framework to set objectives for each event, and then evaluate those objectives after the event.

The External Evaluation will also conduct a series of interviews with key participants, recording, analysing and translating these interviews into a report. These interviews will not only examine how participants assess arts excellence but also the level of decision-making handed over to participants.

Timescale: Our aim is to have someone in place from October/November 2026. The External Evaluator will be required to submit a draft evaluation report by November 2028, with a final report submitted by march 2029.