Young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds are under-represented in the creative world of work and many face barriers to pursuing a fulfilling career in the creative industries. Through mentoring programmes, Creative Mentor Network seeks to create a more accessible and inclusive future for these young people and has already helped over 1000 to date.

ImpactEd Evaluation partnered with Creative Mentor Network in May 2021 to conduct a capacity building project. The steps taken to achieve this included:

• A literature review to better understand both the barriers faced by those from lower socio-economic backgrounds and the evidence for whether effectively training and supporting mentors leads to positive outcomes for young people. 
• A Theory of Change workshop with key stakeholders from the organisation to articulate the problem the organisation is aiming to address, their activities, the outcomes for mentees, mentors and businesses as a result, and their overall aim (as well as assumptions and barriers that may affect their delivery). 
• The development of an evaluation framework to set out an approach for measuring the outcomes articulated in the Theory of Change.

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Natasha Khan. Head of Programmes & Impact

"We worked with ImpactEd Evaluation to redesign our impact evaluation framework…in short they helped to ensure that we have a robust and rigorous impact evaluation framework at every step of our programmes. The team were fantastic to work with, at each stage we were guided by a specialist within that field who brought new ideas and perspectives, leading to learning on all sides."

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Continuing the partnership

In November 2022, a follow-on partnership was initiated by Creative Mentor Network to build on the outputs and learnings from the first partnership. Creative Mentor Network asked for training and support to approach the analysis of quantitative data collected from surveys of mentees and mentors as part of their evaluation framework. 

ImpactEd Evaluation designed a data analysis plan in spreadsheet format and delivered a training session to enable Creative Mentor Network staff to use this resource to conduct their own analysis, following examples that had been provided. Light-touch support was then provided while CMN undertook their analysis and impact reporting.

Creative Mentor Network have implemented the evaluation framework and been able to embed this within their organisation’s delivery, enabled by the design of an approach which was well-suited to the context and needs of the organisation and designed to generate robust evidence of impact for CMN’s annual impact reporting that can be measured over time.

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Putting evaluation in their hands

The data analysis support has upskilled Creative Mentor Network staff to enable them to undertake their own analysis in a more efficient and more robust way, saving the organisation time and money. The approach is also designed to be replicable which will enable Creative Mentor Network to undertake the analysis again independently in future years.

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Natasha Khan. Head of Programmes & Impact

"Overall the training offered was specialised and tailored to our specific context which has led to our team members feeling confident to deliver the framework going forward. We would highly recommend working with ImpactEd Evaluation for any organisation who is looking for specialised support developing their impact work."

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