What is the impact? The results
Impact on individuals and communities
There were six outcomes for individuals and communities:
1. For marginalised young people, the development of improved wellbeing and skills and enhanced prospects for a successful future
More than half the Open Grants and half the Special Initiatives made a positive change to the wellbeing, learning and life skills of children and young people. This was the most numerous outcome amongst the 14 in the framework. Children and young people achieved eight different types of change, including the acquisition of life skills such as leadership and teamworking, progression in attainment, greater engagement in learning, improved speaking and listening skills and moves into new jobs, training or volunteering.
2. For service users, particularly those who are vulnerable or marginalised, an increased voice in decisions about services that affect their lives
Fourteen per cent of Open Grants, and the Right Here Special Initiative, helped people whose needs and experiences may be poorly understood and little heard by service providers, to have a dialogue with and influence on the providers of services that affect their lives. The young people involved in the projects came from varied backgrounds and experiences, including young people who were: ‘NEET’; ex-offenders; from asylum seeker, refugee and migrant backgrounds; young male sex workers; experiencing mental health problems; living with HIV/AIDS; and had learning disabilities.
3. For professionals, practitioners, staff and volunteers, improved practice – as a result of continuing professional development – that improves the services they provide
Thirty seven percent of Open Grants and five Special Initiatives invested in the continuing professional development and training of staff and volunteers. Skill development was a common feature of funded projects’ strategies to improve their own services and to spread new practice more widely. Most of the evidence is from participants, reflecting on changes to their skills, confidence and practice, rather than of any resulting improvements to service users’ experience.
4. For artists, the development of new work and ideas
Artists pursued their ideas and developed new work as a result of the opportunities provided by 18% of Open Grants. These opportunities were created by projects using the arts in their work with communities, with vulnerable young people in schools, the community and criminal justice settings. Opportunities were also generated by new approaches to public access to or participation in arts activity. Awards for Artists has supported 40 visual artists and composers since the current scheme started in 2007, providing artists with financial support over three years to give them the freedom to develop their creative ideas and to contribute to their personal and professional growth.
5. Increased access to and participation in the arts, across many different communities
Thirty eight per cent of Open Grants enabled people to have increased access to and participation in arts/cultural activity. This was achieved in four ways: reaching larger audiences; creating access for people with no previous experience of an art form; enabling participation in new arts experiences; and helping people to develop a longer-term interest in the arts. Grantees ranged from large and internationally renowned cultural venues, to local organisations rooted in communities. Musical Futures increased pupils’ participation in extra-curricular music activity, instrument take-up, and broadening of musical preferences.
6. Within and between communities, stronger relationships and understanding
Fifteen per cent of Open Grants contributed in different ways to better and stronger relationships between and within communities, including between generations. The types of community included: physical residential communities such as housing estates; minority ethnic communities; and geographically dispersed communities of shared experience.
Impact on organisations
7. Changing their services to respond better to the needs of service users and local communities
Twenty six per cent of Open Grants enabled organisations to develop their services in ways that responded better to the needs of their service users and local communities. The Foundation funds many different types of organisation, providing a wide variety of services. Across the full range, organisations changed their services in order to support categories of people with whom they had not worked previously. Work with young people by the projects under the Right Here initiative has led to new forms of early intervention mental health services.
8. Developing new business models to enable new work or longer-term sustainability of services for those they serve
Fifty per cent of Open Grants and three Special Initiatives contributed to the development of significant organisational change. New business models were often ambitious and innovative, producing service improvements for users and, for some organisations, leading to new or more secure sources of income. Grantees’ advances in evaluating their own performance contributed to the sustainability of new business models. Significant new models of work are emerging from at least 12 of the organisations in which the Breakthrough Fund’s 15 cultural entrepreneurs are based.
9. Developing new partnerships and improving partnership skills in order to provide more effective services to their users
Partnership working, as a means of improving services and organisational effectiveness, was developed and significantly strengthened through 32% of Open Grants and two of the Special Initiatives. Grantees led the development of partnership working with other not for profit organisations, in the voluntary and statutory sectors, and occasionally with businesses. Partnerships brought together the different areas of expertise, infrastructure and relationships that were needed to meet various types of shared objectives. Some partnerships involved close cooperation between small numbers of organisations; others were larger, cooperative networks.
Impact on wider policy and practice
Impact on policy and practice, beyond those organisations directly involved in the funded work, took five forms:
10. Local practice
Sixteen per cent of grantees provided some evidence related to the local take-up of practices that had been shown to enable organisations to meet users’ needs more effectively. However, most evidence is of dissemination – seminars, talks and presentations – sometimes supplemented by the testimony of people from other organisations that they intend to adopt the new practice or innovation. There is limited reporting of actual change and implementation.
11. Practice across a wider area
Twenty eight per cent of grantees worked towards the spreading of new or enhanced practice across a wide area, most often on a national scale. As with outcome 10, the evidence is mainly of dissemination and interest rather than of actual take-up. For this outcome dissemination is via national rather than local or regional media and conferences draw participants from national networks. We have indications from different sources of Musical Futures in use in a large proportion of secondary schools in England and spreading through the rest of the UK, though it is not possible to say definitively how many schools are involved.
12. Local policy
13. Policy across a wider area
Three per cent of grantees were active in influencing local policy, using evidence from PHF-funded work about changes needed to improve outcomes for individuals and communities. Ten per cent of grantees were similarly active at the national policy level; these were mainly large, voluntary organisations with a nationwide remit, with greater capacity and experience in policy advocacy than organisations working at local level. As with practice change (outcomes 10 and 11) the majority of the evidence here is of policy advocacy (through various forms of engagement with policy makers) rather than of decisions to amend, create or abolish a policy.
14. International policy and practice
Somewhat to our surprise, there is evidence of influence on practice and policy in other countries. Five per cent of grantees – all arts organisations – attracted the interest of peers overseas, who visited to learn more about new approaches or invited grantees’ staff to speak at international meetings overseas. Musical Futures was introduced in Australia with funding from a US-based charitable foundation and the support of education departments in Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales.