What they wanted
Art & Ageing is a new inclusive Art engagement programme for older people, developed by the Irish museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in-partnership with The Creative Ireland Programme, in response to the unique challenges and circumstances experienced by older people during the pandemic. IMMA was interested in measuring the impact of this pilot programme to understand the benefit for both participants and their families.
What we did
To understand and evaluate what positive outcomes were experienced by participants and their families, Quality Matters undertook research with participants who participated in online interventions, and further interviews with organisations and staff who provided input on the design of the Arts and Ageing programme. The key next step was developing a Theory of Change (ToC) for the Arts and Ageing programme, which is a diagramme explaining the pilot programme’s model and process by which stakeholders experience outcomes from their participation.
Following this, Quality Matters developed a research instrument that would enable IMMA to gather feedback and outcome data from participants about their experience participating in the Art & Ageing programme, which was shared at the end of each online activity, talk and/or event delivered by IMMA’s Visitor Engagement Team. Once IMMA had gathered responses from a representative sample of its participants, Quality Matters completed an analysis of the outcome data and developed a report with findings about the extent of change reported for the various stakeholders.
In total, 73 individuals were involved in this research, including older adults, family members of older adults, health and social care services, as well as partner organisations who also experienced some benefit from this programme. By the end of this process, a workshop was facilitated with IMMA’s Engagement and Learning Department to develop a set of recommendations to enhance the benefit of this programme and to continue delivering an effective, quality service for older adults.
