Grants awarded: September 2024
The 28 grants described here have been awarded between July and September 2024 and total over £3.73 million.
Evaluation consultant, Dr Anni Raw, describes the evaluation approach she is co-developing with project partners on the Parallel Rhythms programme in Huddersfield.
Parallel Rhythms was supported through round 6 of the Teacher Development Fund. Using WhatsApp to capture reflections, their story-building approach enables real-time learning for all involved.
The approach to evaluation we’ve adopted for the Parallel Rhythms TDF project is ‘story-building’ — gradually capturing and thinking about the story of the project as it unfolds in real-time, uncovering learning it offers teachers for their practice. The main emphasis of story-building is regular reflective practice, and capturing this is mostly through 2–3‑minute audio notes recorded by teachers and artists, shared on WhatsApp with me as lead story-builder.
“Building a culture of open, searching reflection is possible, but requires attention to the details of building trust and teamwork, and a system that fits into everyday life…”
The WhatsApp platform was selected at the very first Parallel Rhythms teacher meet-up in autumn 2023 where we introduced story-building, and participants tried out ideas for how to reflect and feedback, immediately after project activities. After a trial run, all opted for WhatsApp audio notes as the quickest and most practical way to do this. We also use the WhatsApp platform for sharing photos and joyous experiences from the classroom, for gently nudging to remind people to contribute, and for generally helping sustain the project’s friendly community and playful culture.
Honesty and openness in a reflection process depends on trust — a relationship between the contributors and me as listener. We can see how important this trust-building process has been and continues to be. While not possible in every project, my being present as an ally in our project community from day one — for example playing and taking risks alongside the teachers during artist-facilitated creative activities at our kick-off meeting, being an open, non-judgemental team player — helped contributors to feel able to speak freely. It’s been proof of the trust concept that the few teachers who couldn’t attend that day have found audio reflecting too big a leap so far, and we’re now working on how to build that same trust level with them.
To support reflective practice we provided a set of open, curiosity-based prompts, e.g. “anything surprising?… anything confusing?”, on a bookmark designed by the artists. These simple (optional) prompts take contributors’ thinking through spaces of positive curiosity and help them give spontaneous rather than ‘pre-planned’ reflections. Because the prompts also support the concept that TDF is about their own learning, we do receive reflections on what’s feeding contributors’ own thinking and creative practice, in the classroom or as artists.
The reflections we’re receiving ring true as very honest and quite deeply searching — chewing over doubts, challenges and confidence issues, e.g. from teachers:
“On the day I felt that fear kick in – I was a little bit scared.”
“This sparked new ideas for me, but I thought – how am I gonna recreate this, just as a teacher, with no artists to help?”
From artists:
“I’m a little bit worried that I wasn’t being as creative with these sessions as I’d like, because the kids are so young”…
“Just how well can I transfer all that to someone who doesn’t have that background?… whether to suggest to them for example that writing a song as a whole group is a viable thing for them to do?”
Contributors also share moments of curiosity, inspiration for their practice and pure joy when trying out something new:
“That was just like — Wow! So little prep, but such massive results for the children.”
“Again, that was something I can envisage being really achievable and built into our curriculum.”
“Really interesting, and made me think how effective that could be in the classroom, not just as a communication or as an instruction form, but through creativity within a session.”
“Definitely the takeaway from today is thinking about that intensive interaction” …
“I’ve already got a few sessions planned… to take them a little bit further – allowing those risky moments! For me to feel scared, but actually the children just run with it!”
We’ve emphasised that reflections should not be performative, that story-building isn’t judging or assessing anything, and agreeing that the story is only useful if it’s real. So we suggested recording the audio as a ‘note to self’, to log ongoing thoughts in a freer way. However, everybody seems to begin their audios with “Hi Anni,” which suggests having someone as a sounding board helps people focus. The WhatsApp link also enables me to feedback, encourage, or tease things out – feeling heard is important in this system, and when there is a tumbleweed response, there may be no next audio note!
We’ve encouraged a collective sense of responsibility for building the project story rather than just being in the story’s flow, stressing that each participant’s experience is equally important for the real story to be captured, however, the trickiest challenge overall has remained the discipline of reflecting very soon after every session. This has been hard for some to build, and this is our work in progress.
The 28 grants described here have been awarded between July and September 2024 and total over £3.73 million.
This report outlines the findings of our fourth annual racial justice audit of Paul Hamlyn Foundation (PHF)’s UK grant-making for the year 2023/24.