Freelance Evaluator - Creative Burntwood

Our Story

Lichfield Garrick Theatre has had an incredibly positive few years, reaching even bigger audiences with a programme that has been getting busier and more diverse year-on-year, developing a thriving community engagement programme and winning regional awards for large business of the year and for marketing excellence. In its most recent full financial year, the Garrick group (the charity and its trading companies) posted a turnover of over £4m, reached a record-breaking audience of 140k people, mounted a national tour of one of its home-grown productions and undertook a large-scale refurbishment of all the public areas of its building. This year, we look towards positively impacting the lives of people further afield with Creative Burntwood. 

Creative Burntwood

Creative Burntwood is an ambitious three-year outreach project to increase the number of residents engaging with creative and cultural opportunities in the town of Burntwood, run under Lichfield Garrick Theatre’s community engagement programme. The town is a close geographical neighbour of the city of Lichfield and sits within Lichfield District but has traditionally been overlooked in terms of creative investment and opportunity. Thanks to significant funding from Arts Council England’s Place Partnerships Fund, and a partnership between Lichfield Garrick Theatre, Burntwood Town Council and Lichfield District Council, we are thrilled to move forward with our plans to deliver a wide range of activity in the town over the next three years.

Consultation to date with residents and community groups in Burntwood has demonstrated an appetite for participatory music activities, professional presented shows in community venues, CPD for primary teachers, an early year’s creative project, and the development of our existing Burntwood Youth Theatre. However, our intention has always been that the overall programme must remain flexible so that it can respond to the developing needs of residents and participants, influenced by a community steering group. Our strategic aim is to build the community/voluntary capacity that will mean the project can have a life beyond this initial three-year funded phase.

About You 

We are looking for an experienced Evaluator to work on a freelance basis for the 3-year duration of the project. You will work alongside colleagues and volunteers to monitor and evaluate each strand of the project, gathering information on impact, participation, and stories of success or challenge, against the following objectives to manage quality, engagement and legacy objectives:

• Work with us to define an evaluation framework for the project, including setting up appropriate evaluation and data gathering tools.
• Lead on gathering baseline cultural engagement data.
• Support Garrick staff/volunteers to undertake individual project evaluation/data gathering.
• Undertake some individual project evaluation/data gathering.
• Lead on the analysis & periodic presentation of findings from evaluation/data gathering to inform project planning by staff & steering group, and to fulfil the project reporting requirements of our strategic/funding partners, including Arts Council England.
• Lead on gathering end-point cultural engagement data.
• Pull evaluation/data from the entire project together into a final project report.
• You will be imaginative, approachable, and have a keen eye for detail. You will work closely with the Creative Burntwood Project Manager and Lichfield Garrick’s Director of Development & Partnerships, as well as the freelance team of artists and delivery partners working on the project.

How to Apply 

Please send an up-to-date CV, and an expression of interest no more than two sides of A4 (or equivalent) explaining your approach to the evaluation of creative/cultural projects and any framework you currently use, to recruitment@lichfieldgarrick.com together with a completed Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form (download below), by 1pm on Monday 13th October.

If there is anything we can do to provide additional assistance with your application, such as providing this information in a different format or accepting your application in a different format, then please get in touch.

If you would like an informal chat about the role, please contact Kerrie by telephone on 01543 412110 (this number is answered by someone who can arrange for a colleague to call you back about this role), or email on recruitment@lichfieldgarrick.com and we’ll arrange a suitable time. We're sorry that speculative in-person enquiries cannot always be accommodated. 

We recognise that some applicants may use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help write their application. If you choose to use AI, then please only use it to assist you rather than relying on it to write your whole application. Applications relying too heavily on AI may be rejected during shortlisting.