82 - Visualizing Impact Stories for Arctic Inspiration Prize

Abstract Information: The Arctic Inspiration Prize is the largest annual prize in Canada. By celebrating and providing seed-funding to Northern teams with innovative project ideas, the AIP supports Northerners in bringing initiatives to life that create the changes they want to see in their communities. Our team was engaged by the AIP to tell the stories of impact for a wide range of projects designed by the Northern teams and implemented across the Canadian North over the last 10 years. We first developed the impact pathway to illustrate how AIP Laureates collectively, through various projects ranging from arts and culture, traditional and scientific knowledge, promotion of well-being, land stewardship and sustainability, etc. create opportunities and generate impact for the people and communities of the North, thus build stronger Canada through experiences, values and knowledge of the people in the North. We employed Indigenous-based methodologies to collect the impact stories and create visualization outputs using personal stories, photos, videos, and creative designs to tell the impact stories. The approach to this project, including governance and team structure, is based on the following principles: the project is implemented by the North for the North supported by the southern team, utilizing culturally appropriate practices, sharing of information and lessons learned, capacity building for the Laureates and the northern teams, and focus on telling impactful stories. We will present on 6 projects reviewed to date including Yukon Youth Healthcare Summit, Ethical Knowledge Sharing and Co-Production, DehCho River Journey, Northern Compass, Qajaq Project, and SmartICE.

Relevance Statement: This evaluation is grounded in Indigenous storytelling which is used to tell the stories of each project and the people who set out to engage their communities and youth and teach about culture, create art, empower, inspire, and share life lessons. In Indigenous culture, storytelling is encouraged and taught as an art and a cultural expression of the people, their ancestors, and their identities. Oral traditions are an important part of Indigenous storytelling and knowledge transfer. Storytelling as an evaluation method is a form of decolonizing research because it supports Indigenous ways of knowing and being in the world. While many evaluation methodologies now rely on qualitative data and stories to demonstrate impact or share lessons learned, most evaluations still utilize the long, written reporting form to tell those stories. In this project we attempted to not only change the western way of framing things (changing logic model to impact pathways and visually representing impact using relevant animal representation or symbols), but we also changed how we reported back to the communities and the funder. The individual project reports were only 5 to 8 pages long and utilized numbers, written stories (portrait of an artist), quotes and testimonials, photography, imagery, art and videos to tell the impact stories and highlight successes and challenges. The reports were developed as a collaboration between a senior evaluator, on-the-ground teams collecting data, and an Indigenous communication specialist who helped develop the visuals. These reports provide project team members with a powerful tool for their own fundraising, for sustainability or expansion of their projects or new initiatives, as well as for sharing their impact stories, success and challenges with their communities. A separate report is written highlighting collective impacts, lessons learned, barriers, challenges and mitigation strategies that are used by the funders and all of the project leads for further improvements of the projects.