Parks for People: evaluation for the Heritage Lottery Fund
Because of our work:
- The project has a detailed picture of the profile of park users across the UK.
- It understands the need for comprehensive monitoring and evaluation data.
- 85% of projects agreed that we had improved their knowledge of monitoring and evaluation.
- The Heritage Lottery Fund could use evidence of the impact of the Parks for People projects to argue for continued funding.
- Our contract has been extended three times by Heritage Lottery Fund.
Parks for People is a Heritage and Big Lottery funded programme that aims to regenerate of public parks with local, regional or national heritage value so that local people can use and enjoy them. We provided support to projects, enabling them to fulfil the programme’s monitoring and evaluation requirements.
Stage one: understanding evaluation. We ran 7 workshops and 3 clinic sessions on evaluation, provided web-based tools and guidance, and coordinated the collection of quantitative and qualitative data.
Stage two: the data. Having coordinated the collection of quantitative and qualitative data from 115 projects, we analysed the results of 72 projects against the programme’s outcomes.
Stage three: sustainable continuing evaluation. We delivered an evaluation framework and guidance for projects and built a dedicated website to support projects with self-evaluation.
Stage four: reporting. We delivered 3 annual reports assessing progress made towards the programme’s outcomes. The data we’ve collected is unprecedented in the parks sector and informed a detailed picture of UK’s parks' place in our communities.
I think this report is brilliantly written – it’s all very clear. You've already made some interesting and very useful findings about where most support/ advice will be needed.