Evaluation

Evaluation Report

Situation Leeds 07 festival was a city wide strategic development initiated by artists, arts organisations and arts professionals working together to:

establish democratic partnerships
develop the visual arts infrastructure in Leeds
offer opportunities to practitioners from students through to established artists
deliver an event accessible to a wide range of participants and visitors.

Situation Leeds 07 occurred two years after the inaugural festival Situation Leeds 2005. A voluntary Executive Steering Group of four people was set up and they in turn were supported by a further four sub groups of volunteers. Situation Leeds 07 had no allegiance to any one organisation and as such would describe itself as independent.

The Executive Group developed a fundraising and marketing strategy. They were successful in raising funds from Arts Council England, Leeds Met University and Leeds City Council; the funds were intended to pay for core costs, which included paying for the festival coordinators (both artists), print and publicity, a website and the services of a marketing professional. It was important to the ethos of Situation Leeds that funds raised supported the infrastructure of the festival and not individual artists’ projects.

Situation Leeds was initially set up with the potential of becoming a regular event on the visual arts calendar in Leeds. However this was always reliant on capacity, funding and remaining relevant to artists and audiences. The Executive Group is now undertaking a period of review and will announce future plans in due course.

This evaluation review was commissioned as a creative way to evaluate the festival and the artists’ projects. The articles that have resulted from this commission are presented unedited. Input into this review was limited and therefore does not necessarily reflect the views of all members of the Executive Group.

In early 2007, Static were commissioned by Situation Leeds to undertake ‘Evaluation Report’, a project designed by Static to deliver a critical evaluation of the arts festival rather than a standard consultancy driven public sector evaluation.

The project's aim was to analyse the whole process of how the event was put into production, from the ideological framework and the curatorial policy and selection procedures - to the curation of the work, the relative success of the work in light of the intention of the show, the contents and use of the ‘catalogue’ and the media coverage of the event and how (if at all) this was affected by the organisers of the event.

It also considered the definition of ‘independent’.

The following commissioned texts are a response to this brief:

Situation Leeds: Contemporary Artists and the Public Realm : May 05/07

Evaluation Report