16 - An introduction to Arts-Based Methods for Evaluation: Exploring Embodied Wisdom with Collage and Body Mapping

Abstract Information: Data don’t just live in the head. Our knowing is intertwined with stories, place, memory, senses, imagination, and history. Yet, mainstream Western data collection techniques often fail to engage diverse ways of knowing and being. Evaluators need tools to elicit meaningful feedback through stimulating, joyful, and multi-sensory techniques. This fun and timely workshop offers foundational concepts and tools for arts-based data collection and evaluation planning. Focusing on embodied wisdom, this workshop explores practical solutions to Zoom and survey-fatigue that result in low participation rates, unreliable data, and harmful patterns of data extraction. Hands-on activities, case studies, short dynamic lectures, and discussion bolster evaluator competencies and encourage participants to build a theoretical and practical understanding of two methods: collage and body mapping. No artistic skill or experience with arts-based methods needed.

Relevance Statement: Acting on the growing demand for creative evaluation methods, this session bolsters the practical and theoretical knowledge of arts-based methods for evaluators looking to add new tools to their evaluation toolboxes. This workshop introduces evaluators to practical solutions to growing methodological challenges in the evaluation field: lack of survey participation, meeting exhaustion, and Zoom fatigue. By diving deeper into concepts, ethical considerations, and practical strategies for eliciting data grounded in embodied wisdom, evaluators will benefit from the opportunity to learn about and practice techniques that embrace diverse ways of knowing and expressing oneself. This session contributes fresh perspectives on evaluation practice and methodology with special attention paid to ethics, integrity, reflexive practice, and context-specific solutions. To support learners of any level of career stage, the session includes tips for practice, real-world examples, time to practice, handouts, and plenty of opportunity for rich discussion among peers. This workshop elevates the conference theme of storytelling in evaluation by offering evaluators tools for collecting rich narrative data through creative facilitation and data collection techniques. As arts-based methods that are growing in popularity in evaluation, this session contributes important insights that support evaluator competencies (1.1, 1.3, 2.4, 2.10, 2.12, 3.1, 3.2, 5.1, 5.2, 5.7)