Over the last few months, it’s begun to feel like the principle of care has taken a back seat when it comes to monitoring, evaluation, or research (MER) in the cultural sector. In this long-read blog article, I’d like to reflect on how we can take more care in gathering the data we either need (or are expected to collect) from our audiences.

One of the things that clients with little expertise in evaluation ask me is where to get started in this line of work. They know they should be evaluating their project, programme or whether they’ve achieved they’re organisational goals for the year, but they’re unsure where to begin. Here’s a checklist of questions and signposting links which I wrote for the Engaging Libraries toolkit, with a few additions to bring it up-to-date. These are equally as relevant for other types of cultural organisation.