SOCIAL RESEARCH NUMBER: 11/2016 PUBLICATION DATE: 3 MARCH 2016 Pioneer Area Programme Pilot Year Evaluation Final Report Mae’r ddogfen yma hefyd ar gael yn Gymraeg. This document is also available in Welsh. © Crown Copyright Digital ISBN 978-1-4734-5986-1 Pioneer Area Programme Pilot Year Evaluation Final Report Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales / Welsh Government Views expressed in this report are those of the researcher and not necessarily those of the Welsh Government For further information please contact: Rebecca Sarasin Knowledge and Analytical Services Welsh Government Cathays Park Cardiff CF10 3NQ Tel: 0300 025 1481 Email: [email protected] ISBN: 978-1-4734-5986-1 © Crown Copyright 2016 All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ Table of contents Glossary ........................................................................................................... 2 1. Introduction .................................................................................................. 3 2. Evaluation methods and timeline……………………………………………..... 6 3. Literature and evidence review .................................................................... 9 4. Process evaluation findings ........................................................................ 28 5. Outcome evaluation findings ...................................................................... 55 6. Conclusions and recommendations ........................................................... 81 Bibliography……………………………………………. ..................................... 91 Annex 1 ......................................................................................................... 99 Annex 2 ........................................................................................................ 105 Annex 3 ........................................................................................................ 108 1 Glossary Acronym Definition ACE Arts Council England ACW Arts Council of Wales AC-NMW Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales BME Black and Minority Ethnicity CASE Culture and Sport Evidence Programme DCMS Department of Culture Media and Sport ESRC Economic and Social Research Council FLS Family Learning Signature KAS Knowledge and Analytical Services LA Local Authorities LDB Local Delivery Body NAO National Audit Office NLW National Library of Wales PCW People’s Collection Wales PA Pioneer Areas PDG Pupil Deprivation Grant RSPH The Royal Society for Public Health SfC Skills for Care TFCC Tom Fleming Creative Consultancy TPAP Tackling Poverty Action Plan WEA Cymru Workers’ Educational Association Cymru WG Welsh Government WLGA Welsh Local Government Association WEMWBS Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale 2 1. Introduction 1.1 The Welsh Government has placed tackling poverty, especially persistent poverty amongst some of the poorest people and communities across Wales, at the heart of its agenda for the current Assembly term, as set out in the Programme for Government. The Tackling Poverty Action Plan (TPAP)1 published in July 2013 provides the main focus for coordinating anti-poverty action and programmes across Wales. It brings together all government policy areas and key partners and stakeholders at all levels to help communities and individuals out of poverty. Communities First - the Welsh Government’s community-focused tackling poverty programme - is a key mechanism for the delivery of the Action Plan. The programme works with communities, in communities, setting in place a local infrastructure which focuses on supporting the most vulnerable people in the most deprived areas of Wales. It aims to make these communities more prosperous, healthier, more skilled and better informed, and has three strategic objectives: healthier communities learning communities prosperous communities 1.2 Communities First is based on small groups of communities known as Communities First Clusters. There are 52 Clusters in total across Wales. Further details on the programme can be found on the Communities First website.2 1.3 Within the Action Plan, the role of culture, heritage and the arts in helping to tackle poverty and support community regeneration has been explicitly recognised (p. 15) and since its publication an in-depth examination into the connections between access to culture and social justice has been undertaken, led by Baroness Kay Andrews OBE. This review culminated in the publication of a report in March 2014, which called on the Welsh Government, local government, cultural organisations, community bodies and schools across Wales to collaborate more effectively in order to maximise the benefits cultural participation can have for individuals living in Wales’ most 1 Welsh Government (2015) Building Resilient Communities: Taking forward the Tackling Poverty Action Plan. [Online]. Available at: http://gov.wales/docs/dsjlg/publications/socialjustice/130703takeforpovactplanen.pdf 2 Further information can be accessed via the Communities First web-page on the Welsh Government’s website. Available at: http://gov.wales/topics/people-and-communities/communities/communitiesfirst/?lang=en 3 deprived communities.3 The report acknowledges the valuable contribution made by the cultural sector to the tackling poverty agenda in recent years, but highlights new opportunities and avenues for increasing access to, and participation in, cultural activities. The report complements and builds upon an independent report on the Arts in Education in the Schools of Wales4 produced by Professor Dai Smith for the Welsh Government in September 2013. 1.4 The Welsh Government published its response to Baroness Andrews’ Report in November 2014, which sets out in detail a programme of work that responds directly to the report’s recommendations and highlights the progress made to date in meeting the report’s key targets.5 As part of this programme of work, a new policy initiative was launched in May 2015 under the title ‘Fusion: Tackling Poverty through Culture’. The initial pilot phase for the initiative ran for one year from April 2015 and involved the establishment of six Pioneer Areas across Wales6. Within each Pioneer Area, national, regional and local cultural and heritage bodies are working, in collaboration with Communities First clusters and local community groups, to explore opportunities for increasing participation in cultural activities at a local community level, particularly amongst those individuals and communities who would not normally engage with these types of activities. The key objectives for each Pioneer Area were to: consider the recommendations in the report by Baroness Kay Andrews OBE and, where appropriate, identify and implement actions contributing to the agenda; 3 Welsh Government (2014) Culture and Poverty: Harnessing the power of the arts, culture and heritage to promote social justice in Wales. [Online]. Available at: http://gov.wales/docs/drah/publications/140313-culture-and-poverty-en.pdf 4 Smith, D. (2013) An independent report for the Welsh Government into Arts in Education in the Schools of Wales. [Online]. Available at: http://gov.wales/docs/dcells/publications/130920-arts-in-education-en.pdf 5 Welsh Government (2014) Baroness Andrews’ report Culture and Poverty – Response by the Welsh Government. [Online]. Available at: http://gov.wales/docs/det/publications/141111responseen.pdf 6 The Pioneer Areas that are participating in the pilot year include Swansea, Wrexham, Gwynedd, Cardiff, Newport and Torfaen. Each Pioneer Area is co-ordinated by a local partnership led by a Lead Delivery Body; in most cases this is the Local Authority, with the exception of the Cardiff Pioneer Area which is being led by Cardiff University. Membership of each partnership is determined locally, but typically includes national, regional and local cultural bodies; Local Authority leads on culture, libraries and museums; local arts and heritage bodies; Communities First cluster managers; Local Education Authorities; schools; Higher and Further Education institutions; and other community bodies such as Housing Associations [see Welsh Government (2015) Fusion: Tackling Poverty through Culture. The Pioneer Area Programme Pilot Year.] 4 participate in the Pioneer Areas programme pilot year in 2015-16; contributing to the evaluation of the programme as a whole and provide relevant data; provide a mutual learning and information exchange; identify and share good practice within the Pioneer Area and more widely; identify new project, programme and funding opportunities for partnership working; and evaluate and publish good working practice.7 1.5 A critical element of the Pioneer Areas Pilot Programme is to demonstrate the value of the approach of establishing Pioneer Areas and, specifically, to ascertain their likely impact on the Welsh Government’s priority areas of improving educational attainment, tackling poverty and supporting people living in deprived communities. The evaluation of the pilot year of the programme had two over-arching aims: i. To analyse the effectiveness of the Pioneer Area programme’s processes, in terms of its design and delivery (the ‘Process Evaluation’). In order to achieve this, the specific objectives were to: understand the context within which the Pioneer Area programme is working and the extent to which it aligns with other tackling poverty initiatives in Wales; provide evidence of what works