• The background of the project

• The methods of evaluation

• Findings and outcomes

It must be stressed that this document reports back upon the setting up of the evaluation process and outlines the method of investigation and our findings relating to the first year. A full-length report will be produced at the end of the two year cycle of residencies and the intention is to disseminate the findings of this summative report through seminars, a website and the media.

INTENDED READERSHIP:

The interim and summative reports are designed to :

• inform the Arts Council of Wales and the City and County of Swansea of the progress of the residencies

• notify other organisations of the value of schools-based arts residencies and of their impact upon the school and its wider community

• provide advice to schools and arts practitioners about the implementation and development of a residency

• link up to longer term research projects on the effects of the arts in education

1 BACKGROUND

1 i The Residencies in Action project is a schools based series of artistic residencies taking place within the City and County of Swansea over two years from autumn 2000 until summer 2002. It is hope, however, that the residencies will continue for a further year. Funding for the project was obtained through the Arts Council of Wales's "Arts for All" Lottery scheme. The project is supervised and co-ordinated by a management team from the City and County of Swansea comprising advisory staff from the Education Department, the Assistant Director of Education and the Arts Development Officer. A special feature is the appointment of a practising artist Lynne Bebb as Artist in Residence within the City and County of Swansea who is also part of the Management Team.

1 ii The City and County of Swansea supports a number of well established initiatives to encourage the arts amongst young people. These include ventures such as West Glamorgan Youth Theatre, West Glamorgan Youth Orchestra, "Wordplay" children's writing week at the Dylan Thomas Centre and regular art workshops at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery. The promotion of the arts as an important part of the educational process and the access to and the participation in the arts activities are central tenets of the City and County Arts Action Plan and its Policy for the Arts in Education, prepared in 2000, that lists amongst other key aims:

"...to secure the arts as an integral part of education, making participation in the arts possible for all, not just through the formal education process, but through accessible opportunities for lifelong learning".

1 iii The City and County of Swansea supports a wide range of high quality arts activities in its schools and there is evidence of very satisfactory work across the arts. Outside schools time, "showings" of pupils' work in events such as the Brangwyn Hall Annual Youth Proms and at the schools drama festival at the Grand Theatre have become regular and enthusiastically attended features of the arts in Swansea. The geographical area that comprises the former county of West Glamorgan has a particularly strong record of producing actors and musicians.

1 iv Prior to the "Residencies in Action" project, arts residencies of varying lengths of time (from a week to several months) had regularly taken place in Swansea schools, most frequently involving visual artists or writers. Residencies have come about through Arts Council support, through the involvement of Swansea Institute arts departments and organisations such as the Dylan Thomas Centre and the academi.

However, there has been an uneven take up in such residencies. Some schools with a strong tradition of the arts have availed themselves of such schemes on a regular basis. Other schools have never hosted an arts residency. Thus the "Residencies in Action" project aims to address the uneven spread of opportunity in this area by allowing schools with no prior experience of a residency to host one.

It is recognized by the management team, however, that schools with a positive record in this area should not be denied a part in "Residencies in Action" because of their success in promoting the arts in this way. Schools have therefore been selected to represent various degrees of experience in hosting residencies. In addition it was thought advantageous to offer another art form to schools that had experienced a particular art.

Additional decisions relating to selection appear to have focused around size, nature and socio-economic positioning of the schools. The City and County of Swansea's catchment area is a very diverse one, and, apart from the city itself (population: 231,180), the local authority encompasses the rural villages of Gower as well as outlying population centres such as Clydach, Gorseinon, Gowerton and Pontarddulias. There are 93 primary schools and 16 secondary schools within the authority.

Electoral wards in Swansea such as Penderry and Townhill have some of the most severe indicators of poverty and disadvantage in Wales whilst parts of Gower and Swansea West are obviously prosperous. The diversity of the region is reflected in the different sizes of school, ranging from the small community school with under 100 pupils to the large inner city primary with over 500 on roll. Similarly, secondary schools range from relatively small Welsh-medium schools to outer suburb comprehensives with school populations approaching 2,000.

The breakdown of infant and junior schools selected for the 2000/01 residencies was as follows:

Each residency also served a secondary school - Cefn Hengoed in Swansea Eastside, Pentrehafod in North Central Swansea and Penyrheol in Goeseinon.

The residencies involved several art forms, reflecting the City and County's broad definition of the arts in its Policy for the Arts in Education as:

encompassing "....music, art, dance, drama, the broadcast arts and literature. In their broadest sense they incorporate a vast array of activities. Art includes craft and design work in the form of pottery, jewellery, textiles etc." For the first year of "Residencies in Action", the three forms chosen were the visual arts (stained glass making, drawing and painting), creative writing and dance. For the purposes of this interim report, the term "arts practitioner" covers artist, writer and dancer.

The time allocated to classes to take part in the residency ranged from two days to several weeks.

2 EVALUATION AND RESEARCH METHODS:

2 i It has often been assumed that the arts are somehow "good their own right". This assumption has been particularly true of arts in educational and community settings where questions of artistic worth are frequently overlooked in favour of an emphasis on participation and on the process of creating art. The notion of the civilising effects of the arts prevails in the common belief that endeavour can somehow create better members of society.

Studies carried out by organisations including Comedia and the National Foundation for the Arts have subjected such blithe assumptions about the effects of participation in the arts to critical analyses of sophistication and depth. The compendious Arts Educationin Secondary Schools: Effects and Effectiveness (Harland et.al.,2000), for example, presents much documentation and evidence about "the range of effects and outcomes attributable to schools based arts education", examining the extent to which "high levels of institutional involvement in the arts correlate with the qualities known to be associated with successful school improvement and school effectiveness". Other recent work on the effects of the arts in educational and community settings can be found in commissioned reports such as Caroline Sharp and Joanna le Metais (2000) The Arts, Creativity and Cultural Education: An International Perspective for the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority in England, and Francois Matarasso's work for Comedia including the influential (1997) Use or Ornament?: the Social Impact of Participation in the Arts.

2 ii Within arts policy making and the funding of the arts, there has been a marked shift away from evaluation by quantitative methods such as logging attendance. Angela Tillcock in her (1999) Evaluation of the Arts Council of Wales' Priority Areas Funding Initiative in the Counties of Pembrokeshire, Powys and Swansea raises the question:

"Does ACW merely want to evaluate by quantitative methods, i.e. numbers of participants, or using qualitative measures, i.e. the types of participants?"

Whilst a methodological shift was already happening at the time of the Tillcock Report, there has been an even greater recognition of the importance of qualitative methods in collecting data about participation in the arts as seen in the 2001 Arts Council of England's commissioning of a sizable programme of qualitative research to support its Creative Partnerships Programme. Thus the emphasis of our research and evaluation work is on assessing the quality of the experience, most specifically the impact of the residencies on four groups of participants - the arts practitioner; the teaching staff; the children; the wider school communityto include support staff, cleaners, dinner helpers, governors, carers and parents.

In line with current research work in education on the results of learning, conducted through organisations such as "The Research Centre on the Wider Benefits of Learning" based at the University of London, the Evaluation Team based within the Department of Continuing Adult Education (DACE), University of Wales Swansea is interested in whether the residencies are perceived to have impacted upon the educational work of the school and in locating what has been termed"social capital".

Social capital is viewed by the research team as a helpful blanket term to aid us to pin down outcomes of education that are hard to quantify in hard data such as examination results, display of skills and the acquisition of qualifications. Social capital is understood to include effects such as increased confidence, trust, creative problem solving, developing networks of friendship and group identification - "soft currency" frequently accrued through arts activities.

There is a broad assumption from the team of researchers that the arts do have a positive effect, but we are aware that disbenefits such as disruptive behaviour and personal dissatisfaction may also result from pupils' participation in the arts.

2 iii The main methods of investigating the educational and social impact of the residency are the following:

• Semi-structured interviews with arts practitioners, teachers, children and members of the wider school community

• Observation of lessons

• Interpretation of written reports by arts practitioners as well as evidence from video tapes, photographs, sound tapes and other media: the "thick description" of the project

• Knowledge of schools' socio-economic and cultural location

• Limited use of written questionnaires to back up interviews

It is viewed by the Management Team as important for teachers and arts practitioners to be involved in the process of evaluation and INSET meetings for each residency have included a component on recording and evaluating the project led by members of DACE. Some teachers and arts practitioners have involved themselves keenly here - although in education and arts sectors that are oversaturated by audits and inspections there has been some questioning about the purpose of "evaluation".

2 iv There is of course another aspect of any arts residency that must be measured in a different currency than that of social capital, and that is the artistic impact of the work. Hence a second strand to the evaluation is the assessment of the work produced using artistic criteria, through recording observers' and participants' views.

2 v Conference papers relating to the "Residencies in Action" project have been given at the University of Strathclyde (April 2001) and at the University of London (July 2001).

FINDINGS AND OUTCOMES

3 i Because of the diverse nature of the schools involved in the residency, it has proved difficult to investigate the impact of the residency through sampling schools. Even in the same geographical area, there can be marked differences in school ethos and behaviour for as the dance practitioner pointed out:

"The schools chosen were very different. I found it amazing that in three schools so close together that the children could be so different".

Similarly, particular art forms can result in diverse behaviours and outcomes. Therefore the decision has been take to carry out interviews over two years relating to all the schools and all the art forms. An additional tier of "in depth" interviews with some schools and selected practitioners will be used to intensify knowledge gained through shorter interviews and questionnaires.

3 ii According to the Arts Council of Wales's 1998-99 guidelines for Visual Artists in Residence, the role of the "resident" is:

"...dependent upon the skills, experience and flexibility of the appointed person matched against the needs, expectations and available resources of the host organisation. In the case of schools projects the artist is not a teacher in the formal sense of the word. The passing on of skills, development and encouragement of young people to work in particular ways through project led schemes, contains teaching elements but does not, and must not, be achieved through "class" teaching. It is recommended that artists work with small, dedicated groups and not with complete classes. The appointed artists may not, in any case, hold teaching qualifications and the school must not regard them as an addition to the teaching resources".

The arts practitioners during 2000/01 were:

Weighing up the progress of the residencies in relation to ACW's recommended use of an arts practitioner in a school, the following points have emerged:

There was considerable satisfaction expressed by teaching staff about the arts practitioners' work and its impact upon pupils.

• The class sizes were in some cases too large for the activity.

• Year group was important for some activities. Physical strength and maturity benefited the dance project. However, an activity such as stained glass making that might appear to be a dangerous activity for young children worked very successfully in a reception class.

• The communication style of the arts practitioners ranged from the firm and "teacherly" to the informal manner of a grown up friend.

• Almost without exception, the practitioners felt supported by the schools. Teachers with interests in the arts in the curriculum were not surprisingly seen as particularly helpful. There was a varying level of support from teachers in disciplining classes.

• Different art forms required more preparation and resources than others. For example, one of the visual artists spent a considerable time collecting paper and materials for her residency, for "the budget is inadequate and the school will be depleted by my activity if I plunder their resources".

  The dance practitioner was responsible for co-ordinating a complex residency, "Steps Around the World", involving four schools, room bookings, two musicians and six other dancers, some of whom required support and training.

• Arts practitioners and teachers remarked upon the benefit of having a residency to show children that skills in the arts could lead to employment. The dance practitioner felt strongly that her residency highlighted "the hidden art" (and work) of dance to less academic pupils.

• The practitioners found the organisation of school life sometimes ran counter to the need for longer concentrated periods of time to develop work. The involvement of pupils in school trips, sports activities and leavers' concerts prevented the smooth running of one residency. A visual artists assigned to a secondary school reflected upon her role in these terms: "Because of the nature of school life I am needing to keep up the pressure to maintain this attention. I am achieving this by presenting a constantly changing set of materials and approaches. I feel that this compliments the work of the teaching staff in that it is building resources which they can choose to use as and when they want".

3 ii With respect to educational outcomes, the following was noted:

• There was considerable congruence between the arts work and the National Curriculum. For example, the stained glass artist integrated her work with other aspects for the school curriculum. In Year 5 work in one school the art work led to diary writing, letters of thanks and to the development of written expression. Arrangements of patterns in the glass window making called for the recognition of symmetry and the use of mathematical concepts. Similarly, her art project in a reception class in the same Welsh-medium school centred around parts of the body led to the reinforcement of vocabulary. The same heightening of the educational experience was noted in the writer's residency which not only extended the children's literacy skills but also facilitated high quality art work and visual displays.

• The residencies allowed children who may have been underachieving in their school work to contribute. For example, a boy with autism who had previously shown a lack of desire to take part in painting and clay work contributed happily to the residency at the Welsh-medium infants school. Similarly, a remedial group played a full part in a secondary school visual arts residency.

• Children's knowledge of different cultures was broadened in all the residencies. The visual arts residencies introduced pupils to artists such as Cocteau, Klee and Mondrian. The writer's residency used tales and characters from the Mabinogian whilst the dance project allowed pupils to try out dance styles from India, the Middle east, China, Africa, the Philippines and Wales.

3 iv Two types of clearly identifiable outcome have been identified - those that had been built into the residency such as sharings, exhibitions and performances and those that are less expected but have resulted directly from the residency.

The planned results from the residencies included an exhibition of art work at the Grand Theatre, a sharing of writing at the Dylan Thomas Centre and a celebration of dance at Penyrheol Theatre. Among other results were displays of work in the school and coffee mornings to which parents were invited, and an unveiling of a stained glass window dedicated to two members of the school's community who had died recently. One of the striking features of the art and writing residencies was the enhancement of the school environment through classroom displays and the presence of art work. The aesthetic impact of the stained glass residency is immediately apparent on entering the schools involved.

Less expected results include a parent from one of the more deprived schools starting classes in stained glass making and the attendance of children from one of the primary schools at a summer dance project. With respect to the latter, the dance practitioner had recognised that the enthusiastic parental support of the arts in evidence at the other schools in the residency had been less discernible in this particular primary school. However, the girls in this school chose to come to the dance summer scheme whilst children in the other schools did not attend. One of the tutors had also learned a new style of dance, Lindy Hop.

Other activities and initiatives "piggy-backed" upon and grew out of the residency, including the establishment of training for arts practitioners in evaluating through the University of Wales Swansea.

I addition, the need for training arts practitioners to work in the community was identified and a group met throughout Winter and Spring 2000/01 to set up a Higher Education Certificate in Community Arts Practice which is now running with 11 students. Funding was found through the City and County of Swansea's Youth Activity scheme (an Objective One-funded range of arts activities for disaffected, young people) to allow one of the visual artists to work further in Swansea Eastside. The "Residencies in Action" project money was used as matched funding here.

Furthermore, the Teacher Advisor for the Arts and the City and County Artist in Residence organised a well received exhibition about the Ystradgynlais based artist Josef Herman that incorporated taster days and resulted in a publication for schools about the artist.

3 v Less tangible outcomes of the residency are still being logged by the research team as this interim report describes the immediate and short term impact of the residencies. Qualities such as confidence, concentration, group work and a greater cultural awareness have been identified by teachers and arts practitioners. The multi-cultural aspect of the dance residency was felt to advance children's understanding and tolerance of other cultures in a small town with few visible inhabitants fro non white backgrounds. This multi-culturalism was reinforced by the visit of a black dance group fro Johannesburg to the schools during the residency. Such work would seem very appropriate in the light of the depressing findings of Jonathan Scourfiled (ed) (2001) The Experience of Black and Ethnic Minority Children Living in the South Wales Valleys, University of Wales Cardiff.

CONCLUSION

The "Arts for All" Artists in Residence project for schools in the City and County of Swansea has clearly had a very satisfactory first year for the following reasons:

• It has provided an impressive range of artistic opportunities in a wide cross section of Swansea schools

• Pupils have obviously benefited educationally and socially from the residencies and great enjoyment by pupils and parents has been evident.

• Benefits have been felt by a wider school community.

• The project has been well managed and members of the Management Team have been active in supporting artists and schools.

• The artistic results have been of a high quality.

• In terms of value for money, some of the residencies have obtained outstanding results.

SECONDARY REFERENCES

R. Burgess (1984) In the Field: An Introduction to Field Research, London, Allen and Unwin.
Martyn Denscombe (1998) The Good Research Guide: for Small Scale Social Research Projects, Buckingham, Open University Press.
John Eggleston (1995) Arts Education for a Multicultural Society: An Evaluation of the AEMS Project, Stoke-on-Trent, Trentham Books.
Catherine Hakin (1997) Research Design: Strategies and Choices in the Design of Social Research, Routledge, London and New York.
John Harland et.al. (2000) Arts Education in Secondary Schools: Effects and Effectiveness, Slough, NFER.
Francois Matarasso (1997) Use of Ornament?: the Social Impact of the Arts, Stroud, Comedia
with John Chell (1998) Vital Signs: Mapping Community Arts in Belfast, Stroud, Comedia
(1999) Towards a Local Culture Index: Measuring the Cultural Vitality of Communities, Stroud, Comedia
Malcolm Ross (1993) Assessing Achievment in the Arts, Buckinham, Open University Press.
Caroline Sharp and Joanna le Metais (2000) The Arts, Creativity and Cultural Education: An International Perspective, London, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority in England.
Janet Woolf (1999) Partnerships for Learning: A Guide to Evaluating Arts Projects, London, Arts Council of England.

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