Evaluation Brief – South Square Centre
Timeline: March 2025 – March 2026
Contract value: £7,000
South Square Centre is an arts, heritage and community centre in the heart of Thornton Village, Bradford, housed in former workers cottages. South Square is home to 3 exhibition spaces, 14 affordable studio spaces, a local history archive, framers, café and bar and community garden. The centre hosts community events for all ages, including an ongoing workshop & outreach programme.
Over the last 5 years South Square has undergone a transformation, raising £1.3m to renovate our Grade II listed building, triggering a community asset transfer of the building, delivering a 3-year NLHF-funded heritage activity programme, improved outreach activities, and footfall has increased to 31,000 per annum.
South Square is preparing for its most ambitious year of programming, aligning with Bradford City of Culture 2025 and putting into practice years of community outreach work and relationship building, alongside what we imagine to be a new period of organisational growth and change.
Our previous evaluation framework (2020-2023) included reporting against a Theory of Change model and a broad range of evaluation techniques including 1-2-1 interviews with stakeholders, staff and trustees, adaptable surveys and robust data collection.
Evaluation Aims
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- Gathering evidence to support the successes and challenges of the current programmes including outreach, exhibition programmes & learning programmes.
- Identify how we can best support Bradford residents to improve their wellbeing through arts & heritage activity
- Identify how we can support visual artists at every stage in their career
- Identify steps to be taken to increase the diversity of our audiences, retain growing audience numbers and support long-term sustainability.
The centre is in the process of updating our business plan so the successful candidate will be required to ensure their work supports the programme objectives.
Expected Outcomes
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- Review of current & previous frameworks
- Aligning evaluation strategy with current and prospective funders including Garfield Weston Foundation & Arts Council England.
- Series of in-person days aimed at supporting the collection of testimonials and case studies from beneficiaries, staff and stakeholders.
- Interim review (6 months), verbal presentation & report.
- Final report & presentation including succession plan of sustainable on-going data collection.
Timeline
Call for proposals: January 2025
Deadline for submissions: Tuesday 25th February 2025 at 12 midday.
Initial site meetings: March 2025
Contract to begin: March 2025
Framework in place: April-May 2025
Interim report due: August 2025
Final report due: Feb 2026
Budget
The full budget for this work is £7,000 and should include the expected outcomes above. We imagine that the evaluator will provide a breakdown of their approach to the contract value and would expect that this would include a mixture of offsite working and some onsite work to gather testimonials and meet with the team to assess the efficacy of the implemented framework.
Proposals
To express your interest in taking on the role please provide a proposal which indicates the following:
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- Your proposed methodology: please explain your methodology and how this will help to meet the aims and objectives of the research.
- Relevant experience: please include previous work, and lessons learned from this, relevant to completing this brief.
- Budget: a breakdown of your full budget
Please send your proposals to alice@southsquarecentre.co.uk
