KDI Report - Udomo Entertainers Youth Dance Event

Overview

Monitoring and Evaluation can be important tools for both funders and arts practitioners in terms of demonstrating the value of the arts to communities and funders, accounting for the use of public funds, and designing policy interventions. The arts (broadly defined) result in three types of value: Economic (economic growth, employment, trade), Social (community development, social cohesion, inclusiveness) and Intrinsic (artistic quality, personal enlightenment, spiritual values).

This proposed M&E Framework identifies five cultural value themes and links them to indicators that could be used by arts organisations to demonstrate these kinds of value. For a full discussion of the development of the Framework, please see A Framework for the Monitoring and Evaluation of Publically Funded Arts, Culture and Heritage (South African Cultural Observatory, 2016). This report demonstrates how the Framework could be applied to a sample of projectsfunded under the Mzansi’s Golden Economy (MGE) initiative.

The Mzansi’s Golden Economy (MGE) Guidelines: Criteria, Eligibility, Processes & Systems 2015/2016 – 2016/2017 version 1.0) funds arts, culture and heritage under three main categories, and a fourth category called “Miscellaneous”. The three categories are: Cultural Events (Annual Live Events for Young Artist; National Flagship Projects and Provincial Flagship Projects); Touring Ventures and Market Access (Digital and Social Medial Platforms Domains; Touring Ventures: DAC Institutions); and Public Art Programmes.

The advantage of having a broad framework is that it can be adapted to reflect the specific aims of the different funding categories in MGE. Table 1 matches the specific objectives in the MGE Guidelines to the three most important value themes for this funding category.