End March 2023, our first installment of the Create Place Leadership programme ended.We have many plans for the future. But for now, I wanted to share with you the brilliant successes via a short summary and a link to our Full Evaluation Report.
This project has meant a lot to us, and in so many dimensions. The programme drew specifically from our collective strengths:
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- The speciality of the leadership programme we located around the expertise and deep experience that we have in the region and in our universities: placemaking and co-creation.
- Its leadership approach took account of the most current research into cultural leadership and adding to that the significant cultural leadership experience the consortium partners collectively have.
- As the structural framework, including digital tools and educational methods, it made use of progressive HE educational and pedagogical models for the scaffolding design of the underpinning learning-environment.
In short, our summary statistics are as follows:
CREATE PLACE in total supported
- 98 creative and cultural professionals,
- over 4480 contact hours
- and 6018 of self-directed study/practice.
The core program supporting the development of cultural sector leaders was delivered through six cohorts between October 2020 and December 2022, with a final celebration event in January 2023.
This cohort programme supported
- 79 creative and cultural professionals,
- over 4366 contact hours
- and 6018 of self-directed study/practice.
19 partner organisations took part in 114 hours oftrain-the-trainer coaching training.
Partner organisations delivered an estimated 474 hours of coaching as part of the live embedding projects.
The programme delivered, on average,
- 22 hours of coaching per participant,
- totalling 1,738 hours of coaching activity.
For our Create Place fellows, the programme led to new partnership working and the ability to secure investment and funding through collaborative working.
Many fellows reported a change in their level of confidence and leadership abilities.
A significant change was that participants viewed themselves as cultural leaders and change-makers in their organisations or within their local cultural ecology.
In summary, we could evidence that participants experienced significant personal change and growth through participating in the programme.
Our consortium partners felt that the area is now known for co-creation methods and that, especially for participants outside the area, that their perceptions of Stoke-on-Trent and Cheshire East were transformed through the Create Place programme.
There was a sense that for those living and working in the area, the programme provided them with the encouragement to stay as a result of seeing expanded horizons and opportunities on Cheshire East and Stoke-on-Trent.
I attach our full evaluation report, put together by our partner The Audience Agency, and with that, the project has officially closed on 31 March 2023 and our next phase has begun.
With so many thanks to all who have accompanied us on our collective way, it takes so many, partners and fellows, to bring a programme such as this to life.
Our Full Evaluation Report can be downloaded at https://blogs.staffs.ac.uk/createplace/files/2023/05/CreatePLaceEval.pdf