Summary of Monitoring & Evaluation for Arts & Peacebuilding – IMPACT & DME for Peace

What would it take for the arts and peacebuilding field to develop evaluation strategies that honor both artistic processes and peacebuilding imperatives?
What changes would allow the arts and culture sector to be even more effective than they already are in achieving peacebuilding outcomes? When artists, peacebuilders, funders, policy-makers and researchers consider this question, monitoring and evaluation considerations figure prominently. In an April 25, 2018 Learning Exchange, 13 scholars and practitioners were convened to explore similarities and differences between the monitoring and evaluation approaches of two broad wings of the Arts, Culture, and Conflict Transformation field: arts/arts-for social change and peacebuilding/peacebuilding-and-the-arts. This Learning Exchange was organized by IMPACT: Imagining Together Platform for Arts, Culture and Conflict Transformation, a planning initiative based at Brandeis University, funded by the Andrew J. Mellon Foundation, joined by DME for Peace, a program of Search for Common Ground (a global peacebuilding NGO) and Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts that promotes arts and social change.