Queensland-based organisation Everybody NOW! creates participatory performance experiences that generate joy. They are dedicated to the creation of high-quality, community-engaged arts projects, that are made with and for community, alongside outstanding professional artists.
One of their centrepiece projects, Roller Coaster, represents a heart-warming and intensely personal performance that combines skate, story and song.
Based on real stories and seeking to amplify diverse voices from the skating community, Roller Coaster resulted in a fierce and tender production that celebrates how hope and heart can help you roll through the rough and tumble ride of contemporary life.
“The Culture Counts data became the backbone if you will, from which we were able to hang off relevant contextual research.”Kate Baggerson, Co-Artistic Director Read the report
Requirements
Everybody NOW! utilised the Culture Counts Evaluation Platform to measure the value of their 2022-2023 production of Roller Coaster. This not only represented an important step in the profiling and development of the company but also advocated for further community-based practice in the sector more generally. The organisation centred the evaluation around six key aims for the two-year project, as listed below:
- Aim 1: To create a high-quality artistic project, employing excellent community-engagement processes, resulting in a highly accessible, and hugely entertaining artistic outcome.
- Aim 2: To listen to, celebrate and share the diverse lived experiences of roller-skating communities and individuals, and treat those stories with integrity, care and respect.
- Aim 3: To generate joy through intentional, welcoming, multi-generational and participatory creative spaces for participants and audiences alike.
- Aim 4: To create safe sites for embodied participation for all people, including people with lived experiences of mental health, gender diversity and gender identities, and sexual and domestic violence.
- Aim 5: To nurture community-strengthening qualities of connection and belonging through artistic participation.
- Aim 6: To consider legacy and future relevance by building relationships and foundations for ongoing generative opportunities and social impacts.
Co-Artistic Director, Kate Baggerson shares how having access to consistent data via their past Culture Counts surveys enabled Everybody NOW! the ability to benchmark across their projects.
“We find that the Culture Counts dimensions align really well with the language we use as a company with our artists, participants and stakeholders, so it has been a positive mechanism for collecting data. Our local council has supported our access to the platform over several years now, so we have built a strong data bank to communicate our value and have been able to refine the questions and approach over that time.”
Kate Baggerson, Co-Artistic Director
Approach
The evaluation process adopted a comprehensive approach, involving surveys of the audience and community participants. These surveys were distributed via several channels including QR codes and digital online surveys, ensuring they reached a wide audience.
In addition to the Culture Counts surveying process, Everybody NOW! consulted external academic partners and collected internal reflections and assessments from artists and key participants. This allowed them to use the Culture Counts surveying process as a standard against which to assess alternative evaluation and contextual research methods.
Culture Counts methodology was instrumental for Everybody NOW! to effectively combine different evaluation approaches:
“We primarily utilise Culture Counts as a post-event or post-workshop evaluation tool but for this project we were keen to combine the Culture Counts surveying process with other evaluation and research approaches including observational reflections from external academic partners, internal artists reflections and assessments, and interviews with key participants and artists. The Culture Counts data became the backbone if you will, from which we were able to hang off relevant contextual research and relate our aims of the project back to the data we collected.”
Kate Baggerson, Co-Artistic Director
Outcome
The project achieved significant outcomes and goals. When asked about the key highlights of consistent evaluation practices, they said:
“An ongoing highlight in the data we collect is a bespoke question we ask around; ‘Have you ever participated in an arts project like this before? And are you more likely to do so now because of your involvement with Everybody NOW?’ It is always a very high number of people who have never done anything like this before and 100% are more likely to do so in the future. We love that this work opens doors for people to participate in the arts and / or see themselves as creative people in ways they had never imagined.”
Kate Baggerson, Co-Artistic Director
Importantly, the data collected suggests that Everybody NOW! realised all six of their pre-events aims:
| Project Aim | Outcome Achievement |
|---|---|
| Aim 1 | 98% of respondents agreed the show was well produced and presented |
| Aim 2 | 95% of respondents agreed they felt their contribution mattered |
| Aim 3 | 97% of respondents agreed they felt welcome and included |
| Aim 4 | 98% of respondents agreed the event had a positive impact on their wellbeing |
| Aim 5 | 97% of respondents agreed the event helped them feel connected to the people in the community |
| Aim 6 | Whilst this aim was not measured by a specific dimension statement in the surveying process, the organisation concluded that there was strong momentum, support and goodwill for the project to flourish into the future |
The project celebrated other key achievements including:
- Produced an economic impact exceeding $430,000*.
- Provided employment to 68 collaborators and an overall employment value of over $140,000*.
- Attracted 1,700 audience attendees.
- Engaged 494 participants.
- Involved 70 community-engaged arts activities
*Not calculated by Culture Counts
Reflecting on these results, Everybody NOW! communicated to Culture Counts that the process of assessing the data against their project aims has “raised questions of what kind of pre-data we might want to collect in the future.” Whilst the organisation appreciates that data collection from community participants is a delicate process, the depth of the Roller Coaster Report has led them to consider further “ways to improve those pre-participation processes to collect more lived experience data.”
The company further emphasised to us how the visually appealing format of the evaluation was a crucial tool in allowing them to present their work to partners and stakeholders. Naturally, the report was “really helpful in on-selling the work to other presenters” and communicating their best-practised products.
Finally, Everybody NOW! found that the language used by Culture Counts aligned neatly with the language they use as a company with their artists, participants and stakeholders. This allowed the evaluation to seamlessly integrate into a larger body of contextual research performed by the organisation.
“We have enjoyed as a team, matching other work we had previously done in articulating our processes alongside this projects’ evaluation.”
Kate Baggerson, Co-Artistic Director
To read the full report, visit the Everybody NOW! website.
