Grab your favourite art supplies and summon up your creative muse! In this episode, we're joined by Andy Johnson, the other co-founder of Creative Evaluation & Engagement (along with his wife, Nora Murphy Johnson, who joined us a few episodes back to talk about evaluating from the heart) to talk about arts-based evaluation and bringing creativity into our evaluation practice. We learn about how Andy has brought poetry, theatre, kinetic sculpture and more into his evaluation methodology, how being a novelist helps him and his clients understand and work in complexity, the difference between prototyping and rehearsal, why evaluators need to channel our inner McGyvers, and how an attention to arts, creativity, and the whole person can help us move evaluation toward equity and justice.

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In this episode, Carolyn and Brian are joined by Michael Quinn Patton for a deep dive into principles-focused evaluation (PFE). Despite some technical glitches en route, we persisted to discuss the relation of PFE to social innovation, examples of how principles are being used, the role of reflection in PFE, and how our grad school statistics class would be different if we took it today.

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Rita Fierro (of Fierro Consulting LLC and DrRitaWrites.com), a multifaceted practitioner of evaluation and facilitation, joins Brian and Carolyn on a deep exploration of the fractal nature of social transformation, trauma and healing, and how our evaluation practices can weave through these complex spaces. From the pursuit of “beloved community” to how we handle our own healing work to working with leaders and being leaders ourselves to what stories we tell and want to be telling to vicarious trauma in evaluation work to what it means to embrace our emotions without letting them drive, we cover it all. Be sure to check out the blog post that inspired and informed this conversation: Social Change is a Fractal Thing

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In theory, this episode was a chance for us to review how we’re doing with our intentions for 2019. And we get there, we promise! En route, we discuss routines and systems, what comes after March Madness, Carolyn’s inability to unsubscribe from email lists, Brian’s allergic reaction to the SMART acronym, and crises singular and collective. We also get a (non-) update from Brian on the Year of the Trombone,and Carolyn hosts a TED talk partway through. Plus, an #evalmemes challenge for our listeners!

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Episode Notes

In this episode, we’re joined by Nora Murphy Johnson, co-founder of Creative Evaluation, which focuses on evaluation for truth, beauty, and justice. In a conversation about evaluation for healing and change, evaluation as sacred work and a noble calling, Nora tells us about the winding path she has taken as an evaluator, how her relationship with her husband, an artist and evaluator himself, informs the work they do together, how she’s working to bring embodiment to her practice and why it matters, and gives us a glimpse into how the first Creative Evaluation cohort is exploring new ways to understand and do evaluation. It’s a beautiful and powerful conversation filled with touching and profound insights on how we can, in Nora's words, do “heart-centred evaluation”.

CONTENT NOTE: To help you make an informed decision about when and how you want to listen to this episode, we wanted to let you know that this episode will touch on the death of a young child from illness as well as systemic racist violence and the implications of this for loved ones.

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Carolyn and Brian are joined this week by former-Saskatonian-now-Haligonian Evan Poncelet to talk about journeys through the field of evaluation. Topics of discussion include DIY bricolage approaches to ongoing learning, whether Evan is REAL, experiences with awkwardly-worded emails, and the perils of clumping.

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Episode Notes

Kick things off right with Brian and Carolyn as we tackle one of the most deep and profound philosophical questions facing the field of evaluation—how do you even start one of these things!? Where do you begin with evaluation? What does it take to unravel the story behind the evaluation purpose? Why give people fake findings? What are the assumptions that can get you off on the wrong foot? What’s the value of a dumb question? How do we avoid the method trap? How does going slow help us go faster? And, most important of all, who’s actually going to listen all the way through that part in the middle where we got distracted talking about our respective file organization systems? Tune in and find out!

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Episode Notes

In this episode, we welcome our first guest FROM THE FUTURE (by which we mean Australia), Jade Maloney, of ARTD Consultants (https://artd.com.au/). Jade helps us “unbox” the theme of the upcoming Australian Evaluation Society 2019 conference, “Evaluation Un-boxed”. Join us as we unpack and deconstruct evaluation in every conceivable way. Why do we call ourselves evaluators? What does that mean? Are we just misunderstood? Can evaluation be a gift? How is evaluation like a creative writing class? Is evaluation more like socks, a gym pass, or a beautiful vase? What kinds of boxes are we putting ourselves in? How many people are we going to annoy by questioning whether we should define evaluation around determining merit, worth, and significance? Should we define ourselves more by what we do, how we do it, or why we do it? How many long, pensive silences did Carolyn have to edit out of the recording after we started asking really big existential questions? And just how many past episodes are we going to reference before the episode is over?

Peek inside for all these questions and more!*

*Answers not guaranteed.

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Episode Notes

Carolyn and Brian are joined in this episode by Dr. Michael Harnar to talk conferences. Listen as we talk about what we enjoy about these regular meetups, our strategies for avoiding both conference burnout and FOMO, improvements we’d like to see in how they’re held, and our favourite conference memories.

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Episode Notes

Carolyn and Brian are joined by special guest Chris Corrigan (http://www.chriscorrigan.com/) to talk about the intersections and interconnections of evaluation and facilitation. Are they warring factions? Soulmates in complexity? Can we "recover learning from the trauma of being judged" and move into a joyful practice as we navigate expertise in complexity for social change? Where does "mooshing" come into all of this? What do facilitators and evaluators have to offer each other and what can we wrestle with together? Tune in and find out! Bonus content: soccer, nonlinear pedagogy, and Brian's bookclub foibles, not necessarily in that order.

Full episode notes available at our website.