Introduction
Assessment is essential for effective artistic activism. Assessment isn’t just about measuring impact, it’s about clarifying your intent so your outcome will be more impactful.
Without some form of evaluation, how can you know what sort of affect your project generates and the effect it has?
But assessment isn’t just about measuring impact, it’s about clarifying your intent so your outcome will be more impactful.
We’ve put together this Æffect Planning and Assessment Toolset to help you plan, strengthen, and evaluate your creative projects.
These tools are not going to tell you what to do or how to do it, instead, they will guide you through a series of questions so you can discover these things yourself. Using creativity for social change demands accountability, and artistic activists need to learn how to evaluate their work themselves.
These tools are based on years of research and practice that we put into something we call the Æffect Assessment Methodology. This is not a one-size-fits-all evaluation method. It was designed to be as flexible, and contextual, as the practice of artistic activism.
All the tools in the Æffect Planning and Assessment Toolset are absolutely free and Creative Commons licensed, so we encourage you to adopt them, adapt them, and make them work for you.
Toolset
The Aeffect Worksheet
The Aeffect App in worksheet form, ready to print and fill in by hand or use as a digital, fillable PDF form. The worksheet provides explanatory text to take you through the prompts step-by-step and leaves you with full documentation of your process.
It is designed for artistic activists who want to maximize their impact by clarifying, strengthening, and assessing the affect and effect — or æffect — of their work.
It is not going to tell you what to do, how to do it, or how to know if you have done it, instead it will lead you through a series of questions so you can discover all this yourself. The seven stages you’ll go through in this process are:
- Goals: What do you want to accomplish?
- Audience: Who do you want to reach?
- Ethics: What principles guide your work?
- Intervention: What do you want to create?
- Metrics: How will you know if it works?
- Evaluation: Did it work?
- Iteration: What can you improve for next time?
Download our PDF Worksheet or Google Doc Worksheet.
The Aeffect Script
The Aeffect App in bare-bones script form, this is a comprehensive set of more than 50 questions to help you reflect upon Goals, Audiences, Ethics, Intervention, Metrics, Evaluation, and Iteration. Perfect for adapting to your own needs.
Download the Æffect Script – also available in French! ¡Y Spanish!
Overview – 10 Questions
A brief overview of our assessment methodology in the form of ten questions to help you think through your project, clarify what you want to do, and reflect upon your process and progress.
Download PDF or Goole Slides Workbook.
AEffect App
This app is your online mentor for planning affective and effective creative interventions. Once logged in, you will be guided through a series of prompts and reflections to help you develop stronger projects and evaluate their impact. Get started by simply creating an account and signing in below. And it is absolutely free.
Measurement Tools
The types of tools to measure æffective impact are only limited by your imagination. Anything that can help you determine whether your project has done what you wanted it to do and reached who you wanted it to reach can be an evaluation tool. Here are some suggestions to get you started.
Download the Tool Resources PDF.
Aeffect Adaptations
Since introducing the Æffect Assessment Method a few years ago, it has been put into practice in the US, the Western Balkans, and West Africa. Each time it is applied it changes to fit the needs of the artistic activists using it and the context in which they are working. Here’s a developing archive of how it has been adopted and adapted.
Download ActionAid Global Platforms Ghana PDF
Explore Further
- A Better World is Paintable: How to make banners, stencils, street murals, parachute banners, and more!
- Creative activism 101: An antidote for despair
- 6 Tools for Creative Idea Generation for Your Next Campaign
- How Artistic Activism can move us Toward a Better Future
- Top Tips for Advanced Artistic Activism
- The Copenhagen Experiment: Measuring the Effectiveness of Creative vs. Conventional Forms of Activism
- Creative Activism: Start Here