Foresters’ Forest – Monitoring and Evaluation

Project Lead: Dr John Powell
Project Team: Chris Rayfield, Nick Lewis, Dr Rob Berry.

The purpose of the evaluation is to assess and demonstrate the effectiveness of the use of National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) grants towards the Funds’ objectives.

The NLHF objectives are that:

  • Heritage will be:
    • Better managed
    • In better condition
    • Identified/recorded
  • People will have:
    • Developed skills
    • Learnt about heritage
    • Volunteered time
  • Communities:
    • Environmental impacts will be reduced
    • More people and a wider range of people will have engaged with heritage
    • Local areas/communities will be better places to live, work or visit

The project commenced at the end of 2014 and continued until April 2022. The project took place in two phases:

  • A development phase which was completed in Autumn 2016, culminating with the submission by the partnership of a second stage proposal, and
  • A delivery phase lasting a further 5 years, following on from the successful evaluation of the stage 2 proposal

During the Development Phase, the CCRI team  designed an innovative evaluation methodology and tools with which to evaluate this complex and challenging programme of activity, whilst also providing an initial baseline from which change arising from the Landscape Partnerships projects can be measured.

During the Delivery Phase, the CCRI team carried out a range of monitoring and evaluation techniques during each year of the project to identify change  towards the NLHF objectives, and seek to explain its cause. The focus of the monitoring and evaluation work involved repeated interviews with key stakeholders, including project leaders, the programme team, the community stakeholder group and others; whilst carrying out interim and final surveys of the wider population with an interest in the area to establish a baseline and chnage that might be seen to arise as a result of the partnerships activities. Additionally, the team provided support to project leaders from other delivery organisations to facilitate their efforts to collect monitoring data.

Th evaluation team have published the reports and these can be found on the University of Gloucestershire’s Research Repository.