Cultural Destinations Evaluation

Tender description

In 2014 the Arts Council invested £3 million into a new Cultural Destinations programme. Cultural Destinations is an initiative which forms part of the three-year partnership between Arts Council England and VisitEngland, the national tourist board. The aim of Cultural Destinations is to enable arts and culture organisations working in partnership with destination organisations to increase their reach, engagement and resilience through working with the tourism sector. Closer working between the two sectors will contribute to the economic growth of the cultural and tourism visitor economies. The ten funded projects run from March 2014 for a maximum of three years, ending no later than March 2017. We are seeking a service provider to support a programme-level evaluation of the Cultural Destinations programme. The service provider will be required to: 1. Develop a programme-level evaluation framework based on evaluation plans and outputs of the Cultural Destinations areas, and the programme aims 2. Provide advice and guidance to grant holders that ensures local evaluation is aligned with the programme-level framework. The service provider will work alongside local evaluators and project leads in the Cultural Destinations areas. 3. Design standardised data collection tools for use across the ten destinations, as required - for example, visitor survey, box office data requirements. The nature of these tools will be informed by consultation with Cultural Destinations areas about their needs. 4. Undertake primary research across the cohort of Cultural Destinations and their stakeholders to identify change in their local organisations, or to plug any additional identified gaps in the evidence. 5. Synthesise evidence from across the streams of work into an interim report at the end of year 1, and an end of programme report for Arts Council England and Visit England. The reports should adhere to the Arts Council’s accessibility and formatting guidance. Further information about our requirements is available in the ITT.