Independent Evaluator

Role type: Contract

Location: Hybrid - Remote working, New Forest

Salary: See full brief for details

About the Role

Culture in Common is looking to commission an independent evaluator to lead on the evaluation of the New Forest’s Creative People and Places (CPP) programme from September 2026 until April 2029. The budget available is £30,000 inclusive of travel and VAT.

We are looking for an experienced evaluator to revise and implement the evaluation framework for Culture in Common and support the delivery team in assessing and sharing the impact and learning from the programme. The evaluator will be positioned not only as someone who reports on impact, but as a learning partner supporting the ongoing development of Culture in Common. The successful candidate or organisation will interact with community champions/organisations of the New Forest, the delivery team and the consortium.

As an Arts Council England (ACE) funded CPP project, Culture in Common is committed to achieving the following outcomes:

• Engage more people from eligible places in a wide range of arts and cultural experiences as audiences and/or participants
• Empower communities to lead and shape local cultural provision
• To ensure excellence and relevance in both the engagement process and the creative and cultural experiences on offer
• To encourage partnerships between publicly funded, amateur, voluntary, community and commercial sectors, as well as collaboration across various cultural institutions
• To take an Action Research approach to community engagement in arts, creativity, and culture; learn what works best and share that learning

As an action-research programme CPP places as strong an emphasis on learning and therefore this should form a central strand of the evaluation. We want the evaluation to help us understand what is changing, why it is changing, and how we adapt our approach during the programme, rather than only assess successes and challenges.

About the Programme Evaluation:

The evaluation is guided by the three core research questions that ACE asks all CPP programmes to track their impact against:

• Are more people from places of least engagement regularly experiencing and inspired by arts and culture?
• To what extent is the aspiration for excellence of art and culture and excellence of the process of engaging communities achieved?
• What approaches are successful and what are we learning?

Culture in Common has an Evaluation Framework based on the CPP key questions as a baseline, but we also want to understand the wider impact of Culture in Common on people, communities, organisations and the cultural ecosystem of the New Forest.

In addition to the framework, we have a Theory of Change model for the programme, which was co-created in 2022 with a range of different stakeholders and went through minor revisions with the consortium in 2025. The ongoing task of the evaluation will be to monitor how well we are delivering to our anticipated outputs, outcomes and impacts.

The Evaluator will be required to: 

• Review and refine our Evaluation Framework and Theory of Change Model in consultation with the Culture in Common Consortium & Team, ensuring that they align with objectives outlined in our 2026-29 bid and Business Plan and the ACE national framework for CPP programmes.
• Attend Team Meetings monthly to keep up to date with programming decisions and delivery.
• Attend occasional Culture in Common events, projects or clubs where possible to tie in with other commitments
• Work with the Team to revise or develop a suite of resources that are accessible, user-friendly and enable a consistent approach to gathering feedback and evaluation.
• Study the upcoming programme of activities and alert/prepare the programme team as to the nature of the feedback that needs to be gathered on each occasion.
• Hold training/focus group sessions once per year with our Community Anchors to inform and support them to collect feedback from our audiences and participants and share your analysis/learnings with them afterwards.
• Produce an interim report each year (April 2027 & April 2028) and a final 3-year evaluation report in April 2029 for Arts Council England and Culture in Common, including a conclusion and recommendations.
• Write up two projects per year as Case Studies
• Complete two ‘Quality Evaluations’ on the Impact & Insight Toolkit platform.
• Attend Culture in Common Consortium meetings twice a year, to provide regular reflection points, short insight updates or learning conversations intended to enable delivery to be dynamic and for changes and improvements to be introduced as the programme evolves.

What we are looking for:

• We expect that the evaluator will analyse data in a robust and rigorous manner to provide informative and high-quality reports and case studies.
• Work in a place-based way as much as possible, working with local knowledge and partners.
• Triangulate data from different sources (Illuminate, Audience Agency Reports, Census and Local Authority data etc.) to provide insights into the learning about the programme.
• Be formative in nature and reflect the action learning ethos of CPP, actively engaging with the CiC consortium and CiC team at regular intervals so that we continue to be responsive in our approach.

Submission Requirements:

Please provide a proposal outlining:

• Your approach to this brief – how you would plan to address the requirements outlined for the evaluation of this phase with an outline of your proposed workplan.
• A short statement outlining your experience, how it equips you to fulfil the brief and why you’re interested in working with Culture in Common.
• A budget breakdown linked to this, including the proposed number of days.
• An outline of what support you might need from Culture in Common to ensure the successful delivery of this evaluation contract.
• Examples of previous relevant evaluation reports for similar projects.
• Two references

Please submit your proposal to Cicely Oreffo, Programme Officer cicely.oreffo@energiseme.org by 12pm on Thursday 13th August 2026

For an informal discussion, please contact Jacqui Ibbotson, Programme Director, Jacqui.ibbotson@energiseme.org

For full details of the role, please download the Evaluation Brief here: Evaluation Brief 2026-29

Timescale

• Evaluation brief issued: Monday 13th July 2026
• Deadline for applications: 12pm on Thursday 13th August 2026
• Interview date: Thursday 27th August 2026
• Awarding of contract: September 2026
• Completion of Contract: April 2029