Presentation given by Jen Ross at the Scottish Network on Digital Cultural Resources Evaluation Workshop 3. https://scotdigich.wordpress.com/2016/04/01/report-from-workshop-3-evaluating-use-and-impact/

1. Artcasting: reflections on inventive digital evaluation
Jen Ross
Jeremy Knox
Chris Speed
Claire Sowton
Chris Barker
Digital Education & Design Informatics,
University of Edinburgh
S Boulton, for the Northern Echo -
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/14110057.Bowes_Museum_trials_new_app_designed

2. ARTIST ROOMS

3. avoid the urge to think of the museum
experience as a linear process, cleanly
divisible into contextual chunks. Above all
else and like life itself, the museum
experience takes many twists and turns and
defies easy pigeon-holing. All of the
contexts overlap and merge; in many ways
the visitor experience is more circular than
linear. (Falk & Dierking 2013, pp.17–8)

4. [I]t’s this thing of how long is a piece
of string. If you want to measure a
piece of string you need to know
what it is that you’re going to tie up
with it. And the problem is nobody
knows what it is they’re measuring in
the cultural sector. So the string is
just a dysfunctional length
- artcasting interviewee
I think you always have to ask yourself,
what is the point of this? If it’s just
literally something to put in a drawer
we don’t need 50 pages. How can we
do this in a sensible manner? … a lot of
the time these reports get produced
and they get put in drawers and I really
have no idea what happens to them.
- artcasting interviewee

5. “I’ve sworn I will never, ever answer a
questionnaire ever again in my life… it
just interrupts the experience of the
event…” – artcasting interviewee

6. “I think when it’s something that feels
more creative and kind of participatory
it doesn’t feel like evaluation” –
artcasting interviewee

7. research questions
• How does offering visitors a way to align their
impressions of the ROOM with specific places
help them articulate their engagement with the
work?
• How can a mobilities approach which asks
visitors to make connections between art and
place constitute meaningful evaluation practice?

8. Self-portrait (1980)
In the car (1963)

10. The lines of music represent the roads and distance of our travel
home. The notes are the sounds of the music playing and the way
we talk to one another. The colours and patterns are the interesting
things we discuss.
Composition 1 (1996) Artwork by workshop participant

12. artcasts as digital resources

13. Wall Explosion II
Roy Lichtenstein (1965)
‘I think Ronaldo is an
explosive football
player’
Reflections on Crash
Roy Lichtenstein (1990)
‘This artwork reminds me of a
treehouse my brother and I built one
summer, in the woods by our house.
Ramshackle and held together with
string and rope, we were convinced
it was the best house ever built! It
crashed to the ground within an
hour of completion.’

20. evaluating artcasts

21. In a climate dominated by the language of targets, outcomes,
outputs, and delivery, using the creative arts can generate
insight from different ways of knowing and bring us closer to
capturing and understanding the evaluation’s story.
(Simons & McCormack 2007, p.295)
a fruitful arts impact research agenda… is not confined to the
demands of an instrumental rationality: [it takes] a critical
approach that aims at an open enquiry of the problems, both
theoretical and methodological, which are inherent in the
project of understanding the response of individuals to the arts
and trying to investigate empirically the extent and nature of
the effects of the aesthetic experience. (Belfiore & Bennett
2010)

22. "I think people mistake the
character of line for the
character of art. But it’s really
the position of the line that’s
important, or the position of
anything, any contrast, not the
character of it." – Lichtenstein,
http://www.tate.org.uk/context-
comment/video/diagram-artist-roy-
lichtenstein

23. gallery
demographic
traceroute
app
imaginative
dashboard
reencountered
artcasting routes…

24. re-encounters push future engagement
outwards, beyond the boundaries of the
institution. The orientation is not one of
encouraging visitors in, but extending
the reaches of exhibition outwards, into
new times and spaces.
The exhibition is re-enacted in the
geofenced location. But also these
locations themselves are re-constituted
as spaces of the gallery: people walk into
the geofence and perform the role of
exhibition visitor; the work reappears in
a way that produces the location as
‘exhibition space’. Location becoming
gallery, gallery becoming location(s).

25. Arts Council England Quality Principles:
excellence, authenticity, excitement,
child-centredness, interactivity,
personalisation, ownership

26. http://qualia.org.uk

28. inventive methods are
‘methods or means by which
the social world is not only
investigated, but may also be
engaged…. the knowledge of
change they permit need not
be limited to ascertaining what
is going on now or predicting
what will go on soon, but may
rather be a matter of
configuring what comes next.’
(Lury & Wakeford 2012, p.6)

29. Photo by Andy Catlin

30. Belfiore, E. & Bennett, O., 2010. Beyond the “Toolkit Approach”: arts
impact evaluation research and the realities of cultural policy-
making. Journal for cultural research, 14(2), pp.121–142.
Falk, J.H. & Dierking, L.D., 2013. The Museum Experience Revisited,
Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
Lury, C. & Wakeford, N., 2012. Inventive Methods: The Happening of
the Social, London: Routledge.
Simons, H. & McCormack, B., 2007. Integrating Arts-Based Inquiry in
Evaluation Methodology: Opportunities and Challenges. Qualitative
Inquiry, 13(2), pp.292–311.
references