Careful and Curious: A Transformative Ethos for Artistic Evaluation

McKenzie, V.; Thwaites, D. & Hope, C. (2023). Careful and Curious: A Transformative Ethos for Artistic Evaluation. Performance Paradigm 18: The Art of Subsidy / The Subsidy of Art, 128-148.

This article offers a conceptual discussion and illustrative example of how more open and exploratory evaluation methodologies may intersect with existing government frameworks to meet the growing impetus for arts organisations and individual artists to measure and articulate the specific value of their practices through formal processes of evaluation. We demonstrate our model’s application in the case of the ACT Government’s Creative Recovery and Resilience Program and their piloting of the Cultural Development Network evaluation framework, reflecting upon the potential of evaluation as a process that generates value itself by developing a language of possibilities for artists and communities (Gibson-Graham 2006). Our evaluation approach is careful in that it values care, and curious in that it is committed to experimental and creative-centred methods adopted across project design, delivery and evaluation.