Evaluation Project

We don’t know! By developing shared evaluation components for use at multiple festivals, we want to learn more about our audiences. We also want our audiences to tell us what does and doesn’t work, and to help us develop best practices in public engagement.

We were inspired by EvalFest, a project to develop a common evaluation for science festivals. Founded in 2014, the EvalFest community of practice developed and tested evaluation methods with 25 science festival partners across the U.S.

By documenting and evaluating our community of insect festivals, we hope to raise the visibility of entomology in our communities. We plan to use our collaboration to evaluate our efforts to broaden participation in STEM, and make sure we deliver the best programs we can.

The Principles of Collective Impact drive our work:

• Designing and implementation with priority based on equity and inclusion
• Data-driven to continuously learn, adapt, and improve using shared measures
• Build a culture to foster relationships, trust, and respect across participants
• Including community members to customize for local context