There’s an increasing interest (in the UK at least…) in designing and delivering place-based interventions. But there’s a real lack of definition of what this means in practice, and how those designing and delivering evaluations of such work can go about this in a meaningful way.
As part of some mapping for an civil society organisation, I found the following useful resources. I am saving them here as a place to come back and add to, as work in this field develops.
Defining place-based work
There’s no consistent agreement on what exactly place-based work is, but there were some useful concepts and ideas.
- Place based working is more of a framework/ strategy for how work is undertaken rather than a prescriptive definition (Dartington Service Design Lab & Iriss)
- There are several typologies that are employed by funders and practitioners (NPC & A New Direction)
- Working on a specific project in a specific place
- Tackling issues in a new way in a specific place
- Trying to change the system and address underlying structural causes of complex issues, in a specific place
Various documents set out principles or ways of working that can help to design effective place-based approaches (Iriss & Corra Foundation):
- Person-centred/ bottom up to respond to local needs.
- Collaborating with local people and organisations to agree what is needed and how.
- Moving beyond projects to try new things and work in ways that can only happen when people come together.
Evaluation strategies for place-based work
The Thriving Places initiative (Scotland) has created a three-stage approach for evaluation:
- Coproduce a site-specific Theory of Change with local stakeholders.
- Use this to inform a formative evaluation approach to gathering long term learning on "promising practice".
- Use this alongside monitoring data gathered throughout the duration of the intervention, as well as survey boosters which gather data on health and wellbeing of citizens in the place/ comparison to gather insight into impact.
The Queensland Government developed a more detailed approach to building place-based evaluation practices. Their approach reflects the need for the evaluation to adapt its focus at different stages, whilst having consistent principles for how it is undertaken, and how the learning is used.
They have also developed a generic theory of change for place-based work that can then be adapted for local contexts.
