Studio to School Initiative evaluation

(past project, Oregon Community Foundation)

The challenge:

Numerous studies have demonstrated that the arts are essential to a well-rounded education; the arts help us express ourselves, providing a source of history, cultural identity, and connection. Arts education has long been inequitable within Oregon’s public school system. Some schools and districts offer multiple opportunities for students to engage in and learn through the arts, while others offer very few. Opportunities for arts education are often scarcest for low-income students, students of color and students in living rural areas.

The response:

From 2014 to 2019, Oregon Community Foundation’s Studio to School Initiative supported 18 arts education projects across Oregon, each a collaboration between a local arts organization and a school or school district. The Initiative sought to expand and improve arts education for K-8 students, developing and strengthening partnerships between schools and community organizations, supporting community-driven and responsive efforts, building greater appreciation for arts education and the arts and strengthening the statewide arts education community. Participating projects received grant funding and support through a robust learning community that brought people together multiple times per year in person and virtually. Experimentation, play, adaptation and creation were abundant over the course of the Initiative.

How we learned together:

As a creative endeavour that engaged well over 100 artists and offered both grant funding and a learning community, the Initiative was an incredible opportunity to play with more creative, responsive and equitable evaluation approaches. As a senior member of the Foundation research and learning team, Kim led the design and implementation of the developmental, principles-focused evaluation of the Initiative. We aimed to mirror the values of the Initiative, bringing in art-based evaluation methods and learning alongside projects as they experimented, practiced, and engaged in the creative process. We used collaborative and participatory evaluation approaches to support shared learning across projects and for Foundation staff and leaders, who came to see themselves as evaluators as we saw ourselves as artists for the first time.

Drawing Lessons from Studio to School showcases much of what we learned together through the Initiative and its evaluation.