Ceyhan, Pinar and Christou, Elisavet and Owen, Violet (2022) Creativity in Evaluation Research and Practice. In: UK Creativity Researchers Conference 2022, 2022-05-18 - 2022-05-18, London.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Evaluation is the process that examines a subject’s (i.e., programme, organisation, system and service) merit, worth, or value and helps to determine and improve their effectiveness and impact. As a discipline, evaluation has evolved to address the contextual circumstances of its subjects, meaning that it often draws theoretical and methodological insights from other disciplines like sociology, design, arts and statistics. Generating or recognising ideas, connections and possibilities beyond evaluation’s disciplinary boundaries require openness, flexibility, and adaptability, often associated with creativity. The need for creativity in evaluation has been first voiced by Michael Quinn Patton in his 1981 book Creative Evaluation (CE) which called evaluators to start thinking more creatively within their practice. Since then, CE has been developed as a constellation of evaluation approaches that employ methods and tools often associated with artistic, participatory, exploratory, co-design and co-creative methodologies (Christou et al. 2021). Our presentation aims to discuss creativity in evaluation research and practice, as an example of a discipline that is often viewed as ‘dry’ or ‘bureaucratic’ and yet it has been showing great potential of applying and exploring creativity within its scope. Our presentation will discuss innovative creative evaluation methods and tools that draw from an array of disciplinary and practice fields like the arts, design and biophysics, and demonstrate the potential that cross-, inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches such as CE have in addressing the complex problems of our time.