Social Impact Evaluation in the Arts
What if we had better ways to calculate the social impact that the arts contribute to local communities?
Photo: Brooklyn Marok
Upcoming Social Impact Evaluation Learning Lab:
Decolonizing Evaluation with Dr. Gladys Rowe
June 26th, 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Online via ZOOM
Decolonizing evaluation is structural, relational, and embodied work. This session invites you to deconstruct western, hierarchical evaluation structures that often prioritize administrative compliance and instead explore anti-colonial frameworks for meaning-making.
Learn more
The focus shifts from measuring outcomes to building Relational Accountability. We will introduce and explore the Four Rs: Respect, Responsibility, Reciprocity, and Relational Accountability (Rowe et al, 2026) as an ongoing practice for centering justice, belonging, and right relationship in the arts ecosystem. Through pre-work reflection prompts, a screening of the film “When We Say Evaluation it Isn’t the Same Thing”, and interactive framework exploration, this workshop provides a vital space to challenge and unlearn assumptions about success.
Participants will actively engage with creative storytelling and intentional reflection to articulate how the 4Rs can transform their daily evaluative work, ensuring their values and goals are seen and actualized in the world around them.
Pre-Work Reflections
These are examples and will be finalized in conversation. Please reflect on these questions prior to our session to help ground our collective work:
What values are you trying to articulate and actualize in your creative work?
What gifts do you bring to this circle, and why is decolonizing evaluation important to you personally?
How might we challenge and unlearn what we think we "know" about measuring Success?
About Dr. Gladys Rowe
Gladys Rowe Dr. Gladys Rowe (she/her) is Muskego Inninew (Swampy Cree) with membership in Fox Lak Cree Nation in Northern Manitoba, Canada. She also holds relations with ancestors from Ireland, England, Norway, and Ukraine, and carries these lineages with respect and responsibility in all of her work. Gladys’ educational background is in social work, and she hold a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies (Social Work, Indigenous Studies, and English, Film & Theatre). She is the Director of Indigenous Insights Collective.
Gladys has over 19 years of experience as an Indigenous community facilitator, program designer, educator, researcher, and evaluator. She has been consulting full-time since October 2020, providing evaluation, learning, and strategic support for projects and organizations across Turtle Island. This builds on her long-standing work since 2008 in leading and supporting learning, evaluation, development, and innovation initiatives that bridge community knowledge and institutional systems. Her roots in Winnipeg are deep with her experience as the founding
Research and Evaluation Director at The Winnipeg Boldness Project and her work with Huddle South Central and Huddle Manitoba being pivotal projects to support organizations serving youth and families in Winnipeg.
As an Indigenous evaluator and artist, Gladys integrates arts-based methods—including poetry, collage, zine-making, and visual storytelling—to support reflection, data storytelling, and collective meaning-making. Her approach is rooted in Indigenous, decolonial, and anti-colonial frameworks. Ceremony and land-based practices shape how she designs, implements, and makes sense of evaluation processes. Gladys approaches the work as a respectful guest rather than an insider, centering accountability to the communities and lands where the work takes place. Her practice recognizes that systems transformation happens through relationships, dialogue, and creativity—holding space for complexity, healing, and emergence.
She also hosts Indigenous Insights: An Evaluation Podcast, launched in Fall 2022, which has released over 50 episodes and received more than 27,000 global listens. Through this platform, Gladys uplifts stories of Indigenous and decolonial evaluators, artists, and community leaders who are reimagining what evaluation can be when grounded in values, stories, and shared humanity. Season 5 has recently launched
About the Social Impact Evaluation in the Arts Action Lab In 2024, Arts Ottawa embarked on a collaborative research project with Third Angle, funded by the Ottawa Community Foundation. This project explored the value and feasibility of a regional Arts Impact Calculator: a tool that helps Ottawa arts organizations measure and communicate their social and economic impact.
Together, Arts Ottawa and Stephanie Nadeau from Third Angle identified gaps and opportunities to strengthen local capacity and better communicate the social impact of the creative sectors. Stephanie and Third Angle then synthesized the findings into the Impact Calculator Feasibility Study.
PAST EVENTS IN THIS SERIES:
Why Social Impact Evaluation?
We know the arts contribute to vibrant, healthy community and a thriving local economy. According to the Ontario Arts Council, Eastern Ontario’s Arts and Culture sector generates $2.7 billion in GDP. Yet still, current tools for measuring social impact lack consistency and accessibility across the sector.
Why Measure Impact?
Show the value of arts to partners and the community.
Attract investment and build support.
Advocate for funding and policy change.
Through this Action lab, Arts Ottawa aims to address how we can use and build upon the Impact Calculator to capture the individual and collective impact of arts activities in Ottawa.
Meet the Action Lab Prototypers
MAEVE TAVAKOLI
Project WARP
projectwarp.ca | @projectwarp_
WARP is a paid learning and mentorship opportunity co-produced and co-facilitated by a consortium of DIY music and arts organizations in the Algonquin-Anishnaabe territory. Our goal is to equip and support early- and mid-career individuals and artist collectives with project development essentials, providing them the resources and tools needed to create safe(r), more accessible, and more sustainable experiences.
NAHEEN AHMED
BEING Studio
www.beingstudio.ca | @beingstudio_ott
BEING Studio is a Non-profit that provides accessible arts programs both online and in-studio for adults with developmental disabilities.
I hope to learn how to assess impact of services and events for general public in order to secure grants that can help maintain the Studio's mission to support people with disabilities.
RAE LANDRIAU
Create Change Collective
createchangecollective.weebly.com | @createchangecollective
Create Change Collective is a community-based organization focused on environmental education using art. The aim of our work is to engage community in outdoor education and empower them to take climate action.
Our goals in the Action Lab are to (1) develop more comprehensive methods to assess the impact of our work, going beyond standard quantitative data collection and (2) exploring practical frameworks for decolonizing evaluation.
EMEL TABAKU
Civic Imagination Lab
info2047785.wixsite.com/imagination-lab | @civicimaginationlab
As co-founder of Civic Imagination Lab, I help create spaces where people come together to imagine and build more just, joyful, and regenerative futures. Through creative workshops, storytelling, and collaborative dialogue, our work supports youth, artists, and community members to strengthen policy literacy, shape public conversations, and envision bold new systems from the ground up.
CANDIDE UYANZE
www.candide.xyz | @candide.xyZ
My name is Candide, and I'm a Creative Technologist working at the intersections of digital media, access, storytelling, and open source software. As a past WARP participant, I organized a hybrid video editing workshop series for local BIPOC artists, designers, and creatives.
As an emerging event organizer, I'm eager to learn more about the tools and emerging frameworks for social impact evaluation. I also want to explore alternative, anti-colonial, and accessible approaches to the field.
BLUE PETTIES
Queer Arts & Culture Network
The Queer Arts and Culture Network (QACN) is a community-based, by and for Queer Art Organization that serves Queer and gender-diverse artists and creators in Ottawa. QACN is dedicated to empowering creators, reimagining systems, and co-creating communities of care.
We are looking to build our capacity in the areas of impact evaluation, community-based storytelling, and sustainability.
MIRIAM FARAJA
Integration 101 Hub
integration101hub.org | @the101hub
We are a team working at the intersection of art, technology, and social justice. Through visual storytelling, photography, and participatory projects, we explore memory, integration, resilience, and power within marginalized communities. Through Integration 101 Hub, we create artistic and technological programs that help youth and adults share their stories, using art as a tool for expression, healing, and connection. Our work centers lived experience and aims to foster meaningful dialogue, strengthen communities, and contribute to lasting social change.
EMILY RAMSAY & MERAL TAN
Digital Arts Resource Centre
digitalartsresourcecentre.ca | @digitalartsresourcecentre
We are a media arts organization that supports artists and creators at every stage of the creative process, with a focus on community, collaboration, and accessibility. We also work to amplify the voices of grassroots and equity-deserving organizations, helping ensure their stories and contributions are recognized within the broader cultural landscape.
By participating in this lab, we hope to strengthen our ability to document and communicate the social impact of grassroots arts initiatives, and to develop tools that help highlight the cultural and community value of this work.
Meet our Action Lab Advisors
These advisors will support the Action Lab as mentors to contribute expertise, findings, and resources from their work in research, evaluation, or practical tools.
Robin Sokoloski From Mass Culture
Robin Sokoloski (she/her) is a dedicated arts and culture professional based in Tkaronto/Toronto with over two decades of experience in the field. Currently serving as the Director of Research and Programming at Mass Culture, she collaborates with academics, funders, and arts practitioners to mobilize the creation, amplification, and community-informed research that supports the arts sector’s growth and sustainability.
At Mass Culture, Robin has spent the last three years project managing Research in Residence: Arts’ Civic Impact, a national research initiative that led to the development of three qualitative arts impact frameworks. These tools help arts organizations better understand their civic impact through qualitative indicators. She also leads Mass Culture’s Evaluative Thinking Initiative, which supports a culture of reflection and continuous learning across the arts sector, and stewards the DNA: Data Narratives for the Arts program, which integrates data practices into the daily work of arts organizations through training, tools, and collaborative learning.
Robin currently serves on the Board of the Toronto Arts Council and as a member of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Centre for Free Expression’s Steering Committee. She has recently taught a course on Art Policy, Equity, and Activism for Centennial College’s Arts Management program, and developed and taught a course on Cultural Entrepreneurship for MacEwan University’s Arts and Cultural Management program.
Shanice Bernicky From Mass Culture
Shanice Bernicky (she/her, elle) is a media maker and PhD student at Carleton University’s School of Journalism & Communication. She completed a Master’s research-creation thesis in Media Studies at Concordia University, as a non-linear documentary exploring themes of domestic violence, heritage, and multi-racial identity from the axis point of natural Black hair. As a freelance video editor, she has worked on a myriad of projects on rich topics such as Indigenous laws and practices outside the settler-Canadian legal framework, feminist commentary on science and technology studies, and environmental issues connecting the East and the West. At Carleton, Shanice researches equity practices in the settler-Canadian public arts institutions with the continued support of Mass Culture. When she’s not working, she can be found knitting or with her hands in earth.
Natasha Qureshi From Sympl Solutions
Natasha Qureshi is the Founder and Principal of Sympl Solutions, a Toronto-based consultancy that bridges strategy, finance, and data for the arts and nonprofit sectors. She is also the Co-Creator of ArtMetrica, a platform helping arts and culture organizations measure and communicate their impact through intuitive dashboards and shared data frameworks. A Fulbright Scholar with a background in Computer Science and an MBA from Cornell University, Natasha combines technical and strategic expertise to help the arts and culture sector tell its stories through data, strengthen its value to communities, and shape a more sustainable and equitable creative ecosystem.
Action Lab Goals and Outcomes
The Action Lab will strengthen conversations, shape practical outcomes, and build approaches that benefit the entire arts community.
We aim to:
Develop skills to process, articulate, and report qualitative and quantitative data
Build confidence in tracking and implementing impact indicators
Address roadblocks like HR capacity or skill gaps in evaluation
Leverage impact-evaluation skills for fundraising and advocacy
Engage with national and regional networks, aligning work with other impact-indexes, like the United Nation’s 16 Sustainable Development Goals
During the introductory session to our Arts Impact Evaluation Action Lab on December 15th, 2025, Meral Tan, one of our CAMs, joined to observe the session and share their experience and key takeaways as an Arts Correspondent. Read the article here.