Having been up in the Midlands for most of the time the project was running I hadn't been to any of the events, so this was a very interesting opportunity to investigate a diverse and ambitious participatory project (set of projects!) that reached some 12000 people over 3 years, two counties (Wiltshire & Hampshire) and seven or more green sites.
Here's a short extract from the introduction of my 16000-word report, followed by an extract from the case study of the audio walk 'A Feel for Nature' made by primary, secondary children & adults with visual impairment, working with Nicky Bellinger (Public Attraction) at Itchen Valley Country Park.:
This external evaluation was commissioned
at the end of the three year NoA project, as one of several activities under additional
funding from Natural England for ‘Supporting Change’. In December 2012 Nature
of Art In Wessex hosted a one-day arts conference for 75 people with an
interest in art, nature and education to learn about the project, network and
take part in arts and nature workshops. The conference acted as advocacy and
celebration of ‘using the arts to unlock nature’, launching the Nature of Art
In Wessex Resource Booklet alongside the newly updated website with further resources,
case studies, network and funding information.
Six interviews with conference
participants are included as a DVD appendix to this report. These short vox
pops give a flavour of the day by sampling the range and expertise of
delegates, capturing their response to the NoA project, and asking about their
own interest in the combination of art and nature.
As noted in the introduction above, extensive
high quality evaluation material has been collected, analysed and reported upon
throughout the project. This has been a rigorous internal process through which
the project (and team) have embraced reflection, learning as they have progressed
through each stage of the delivery plan. Internal evaluation has been shared
publicly, online and in reports to funders and partners.
Thus the aim of the external evaluation
has been to complement rather than duplicate the material already available - although
some duplication is inevitable, given the depth, breadth and quality of
existing evaluation materials.
The external evaluation has brought an independent
perspective and neutral point of consultation to explore the impact of NoA on
project partners and participants. In particular with regard for sustained
engagement with nature and/or with the arts, and points of learning to
incorporate in any future work.
It would have been interesting to survey
the legacy of the project’s impact on re-engagement with nature, access to the
green sites and re-engagement with the arts, however this was not readily possible.
Access was not available to previous public event audiences; the nature of
working with ‘hard to reach’ groups is that people move on and cohorts change. Data
collected during the project shows some immediate increased engagement with
sites in addition to the extensive engagement via NoA sessions and events. It
also shows a strong intention by participants to revisit sites and/or explore
other areas of nature in their locality.
NoA activities have commonly been held at the partner greenspace sites.
Those workshops held elsewhere have usually integrated a site visit prior to
the workshop, with the invitation to return as a group or independently to see artwork
displayed on site during a subsequent event. The project officer’s final report
to Natural England details how greenspace sites have been promoted: for example
within the Festival website and booklet, 60 000 copies of which are sent out
each year, reaching a different target audience than the sites would normally
have access to.
The external evaluation has sought to gather
independent feedback and explore issues of impact, re-engagement and legacy.
This has been done by making site visits, meeting with small focus groups of
workshop participants, and through communication with a range of project partners,
volunteers and other contacts.
The external evaluation has involved:
- · reviewing internal project documentation, website and reports
- · attending the Nature of Art In Wessex conference, observing workshop sessions, interviewing delegates and NoA contributors
- · meetings in person, by phone and email with the project officer
- · email and phone contact with a range of partners from all sites
- · an online survey completed by a sample of partners, artists, volunteers and independent adult participants from 5 of the 6 sites
- · a paper survey completed by the 2012 NoA cohort from St Andrew’s Primary School, Laverstock
- · site visits to green sites and selected partner venues in four of the project areas, including meetings with staff, volunteers, artists and/or participants and review of in-house documentation /evaluative materials
- · focus group with staff and adult participants at Dene Court Homeless Shelter, Andover
- · focus group with staff and children at St Andrew’s Primary School, Laverstock
- · focus group with staff and children of the Visual Impairment Unit at Toynbee Secondary School, Eastleigh
Findings from those consulted during the evaluation
are presented in this report via a series of case studies, cross-project
feedback presented as a sample SWOT analysis, a discussion on the benefits of
bringing art and nature together and appendixes containing a DVD of video
interviews conducted at the conference and the full responses from two surveys
conducted. Observations from the evaluation and a summary of key points are made
at the end of each section. The concluding discussion includes recommendations
for future work.
Visual
Impairment Unit, Open Sight, Nature of Art In Wessex ‘A Feel For Nature’ Audio Tour Project and Itchen Valley
Country Park, Eastleigh, 2012
[For more information see - Internal evaluation report 2012: p.4; NoA
case study: https://www.salisburyFestival.co.uk/editorial.php?ref=noa-case-study-ivcp and the project
website: http://www.feelfornature.co.uk/ ]
Staff and students from the visual
impairment unit of Toynbee Secondary School worked with artist Nicky Bellenger
to create artwork and audio exploring their sensory responses to the site, during
two workshop sessions at Itchen Valley Country Park. The artist also worked
with children with visual impairment from local King Copse Primary School and
adults from Open Sight’s Hampshire network. The artist edited audio and artwork
from the three groups’ workshops during post-production, creating the audio tour
‘A Feel For Nature’. The tour contains three ‘zones’ that can be walked
individually or consecutively.
A website promotes the project and offers
the audio tour as an mp3 or iTunes download, with a downloadable map to
accompany the tour. Itchen Valley Country Park has mp3 players with the tour
on, which are available for loan by visitors to the site. The NoA groups were
invited back to the Country Park for a launch event. The audio tour and Country
Park were also publicised via the Salisbury Festival programme and website as
available for anyone to download/use at any time whilst visiting the Park.
For this case study staff, five students
and the artist contributed to a focus group at the school. A phone interview
was held with the Open Sight coordinator and a face-to-face interview with the
artist at The Point. The evaluator also made an independent visit to Itchen
Valley to try out the downloaded audio trail and map. As this project is
unusual to NoA in its use of technology, experience of the artwork during the
site visit is also discussed." - from External Evaluation Report by Jackie Calderwood Feb 2013, p. 19
.....
This was my first visit to Itchen Valley
Country Park. I used my own device (iphone) with headphones and had no
difficulty downloading the tour and printing the map in advance of my visit. I
explored the park on my own on a cold, dry December morning, muddy underfoot. The
combination of paper map, introductory commentary and trail markers (a yellow
sign with black headphones) made it easy to get started following the trail.
Listening to voices, songs and sounds
from the children of King Copse Primary was a wonderful way to begin to engage
with the place, the wooden play sculptures. To start to feel oneself in
another’s footsteps and consequently extending one’s own experience.
Listening to sounds of splashing puddles,
crispy leaves, I wondered what time of year the audio was made - sounds
familiar with those of my visit today. An invitation to climb, stand in certain
places, create my own sounds, brought the trail alive.
At times it was difficult knowing where
to start the next track. The map seemed sometimes to mark the beginning,
sometimes the end, of the area covered by each track. Numbering the signage to
correspond to audio tracks would make navigation simpler, as features described
can change - the badger sculpture was absent on my visit - and one wooden
bridge looks much like the next before the audio reveals its unique
characteristics.
The Toynbee zone had a different ambience from King Copse and
several times I almost turned to look for the source of voices under the trees,
laughter and sounds of the zip wire - good use of stereo in the recordings to
give a 3D effect.
I was invited to stand on a tree stump
and feel myself in a different relationship with the surroundings, then I found
another stump, encouraged to find my own landmarks off the prescribed path. With
no other visitors around it was almost as if listening to ghosts in the woods,
a theme picked up by the students in their piece for the ‘spooky trees’.
In contrast the Open Sight zone
encouraged me to think about those people visiting the park, get a sense of
their interaction, learn through their ears and finally remove my headphones
and absorb the park through a heightened sense of listening and of connection
with the place.
The tour was rich and engaging, easy to
use (apart from identifying some locations) and offers good flexibility when
used with the map to explore at one’s own pace, freedom to choose how long and
where to walk. It could be reused on subsequent visits and different times of
year, and by individuals or as part of a group experience, with renewed
interest on subsequent visits.
The question of audience is especially
pertinent for an ‘invisible’ work like this, that requires pro-active
engagement - loaning equipment from the visitor centre or downloading from the
internet. Even with good publicity, public and family audiences are still
hesitant to use such artworks; it is still a new and emerging arts medium. For
me, as a media artist specialising in mobile and site-specific audio-visual
artworks with community engagement, the tour had multiple layers of interest
and incentive to use it. However for general visitors, there will be different
expectations and incentives for an audio tour, which publicity materials will
need to address - who are the specific audiences for the work, why would they
want to use it and what will it add to their visit? How do people think about an audio tour and what needs to be
addressed to overcome any misconceptions? For example, parents may think the
audio would be only for children and that using an mp3 player detracts from
their child playing in the outdoor environment. Marketing which demonstrates
that adults can listen and play whilst using the tour to enrich their
engagement might help to counteract such misconceptions.
Events are a good way to encourage
audiences to try out this kind of work, with support on hand for using
technology - which may otherwise act as a deterrent even to competent users.
Seeing a tour in use can be effective in attracting more people to try it out,
the audience then snowballs.
A Feel for Nature is an excellent educational
resource that could be promoted to school groups visiting the park and to
service providers wishing to better understand visual impairment. As the artist
found, walking and talking in a place is a highly effective way to record
personal reflections that can be used as consultation or advocacy materials.
Taking a target audience to listen to those reflections in that place provides a
direct multi-sensory experience and embodied learning, quite different to other
ways of information sharing.
A growing number of artists, media and
technology organisations have expertise in mobile, locative and pervasive media
used for environmental and heritage tours, artworks and community
participation. Future project developments might consider bringing in a
specialist partner to advise on or co-produce this developing medium. (For example, the Interactive Media
Centre at Wiltshire College, Chippenham; Bristol’s Pervasive Media Studio and
associated collaborators. Walking Artist Network is a network of artists and
researchers interested in the experience of walking - with and without
technological aids.)"
- from External Evaluation Report by Jackie Calderwood Feb 2013, pp. 24-26
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