Ideas Test Director, Lucy Medhurst (pictured right), talking to members of our community in Sittingbourne. Photo by Cassandra Gibbs.

Story of Change – How we plan our projects

We use a method of planning called Story Of Change.

This focuses on 4 different areas:

Why we’re doing the project or event.

The changes we want to make on those who take part, the local community and how that ties into our overall vision of Ideas Test.

What we’re going to do.

The activities, the workshops, all the events that make up the project.

Who we work with.

This section focuses on the people who we’ll work with. From people taking part in workshops or going to events, to workshop leaders, partner organisations, funders and sponsors, people are an important part of all our projects.

How we do this.

This is the part where we decide what we’re going to do and what we need to do it. This can range from planning workshops to finances.

 

Our team creates a Story of Change for every project we do.
We even have a Story Of Change on Ideas Test overall which you can read here: Ideas-Test_SOC_v7.pdf (123KB)

 

 

Evaluation

Every project we need evaluation. We do this for 3 main reasons.

  • Report what we’ve spent to our funders
  • See who took part in our events and projects
  • To understand what effect our project had on our communities.

This is why we may ask you to fill out a data postcard after an event or take part in an interview with an independent evaluator – someone outside our organisation so you can be honest in your feedback.

We work with independent evaluators MB Associates. They help us keep track of who’s taking part, what we’re learning and what the results are.

 

 

Case Studies

Ideas Test writes Case Studies about our projects, the way we work, and the things we learn.

Below is a list of our most current Case Studies.

December 2019: Ideas Test at No34 Case Study – FINAL.pdf (3mb)

To read our Case Studies from 2017-2014 visit our Case Studies page

All our Case Studies are in PDF formats.

 

Business Plan

At every phase of our Creative People And Places funding, we have created a business plan.

This is a roadmap for Ideas Test that outlines our goals, details how we want to achieve them and the time frame that we want these goals to be achieved in.

You can read our Phase 3 Business Plan for 2020/2023 here: Ideas-Test-CPP3-business-plan.pdf (594 KB)