THEORY OF CHANGE 

THEORY OF CHANGE, 2011

Interfolk was coordinator for a preparatory meeting, supported by the Leonardo da Vinci programme. that took place Sept 2011 at Birkbeck College in London. 

The partipants at the meeting included:

• The chief executive from Interfolk (DK)
• The Secretary General from the National Association of Cultural Councils (DK)
• The leader of the New York Centre of ActKnowledge (US), and the regional leaders from  London (UK) and Dublin (IE) - see  www.actknowledge.org 
• The director from Norske Kunstforeninger (NO)
• The director from Finlands Svenska Ungdomsförbund rf (FI)
• The project manager from Network of Mazovia Region Cultural Centres (PL)
• The project manager from the Slovakian CVNO - Education Centre for Non-Profit Organisations (SK)

The goal of the preparatory meeting was to plan an application for a Leonardo Multilateral project, Development of Innovation with deadline February 2012.

Period, aim and objectives

The initial plan was that the Leonardo development project could start in Oct 2012 and end in May 2015 (32 months).

The overall aim of the project is to provide new methods and tools in the voluntary cultural sector for strategic planning, profiling, quality assurance, documentation and evaluation by an innovative transfer of the “Theory of Change” to the context of voluntary cultural activities and amateur culture.

The objectives were:

• to transfer, develop and clarify the methodology of a “Theory of Change” for the amateur art and voluntary cultural associations;
• to prepare and complete pilot tests of the method;
• to prepare and publish a Handbook for documentation of voluntary cultural work including examples from the pilot tests;
• to prepare and test course modules on “Theory of Change” in a voluntary cultural context including a reference to qualification standards in coherence with ECVET and EQAVET;
• to prepare and publish a compendium on VET modules in Theory of Change in voluntary culture.
• to prepare and launch a web portal for documentation of voluntary cultural activities; 
• to complete an ongoing and sustainable valorisation of the activities and results of the project.

Outcome of the preparatory meeting

Unfortunately, the partners could agree on the project plan, espcially not the division of tasks and responsibilities, and Interfolk decided after the preparatory meeting not to apply the Leonardo programme. 

Some years later, we had the priviligie that the leader of Actknowledge joined as partner and project evaluator our Grundtvig multilateral project: "Culture Guides for marginalised social group" (GUIDE) .  And afterwards, we also cooperated in more Nordic projects with Finlands Svenska Ungdomsförbund.

More information

• See the project concept for the Leonardo dvelopment project
• See the Theory of Change course programme that was part of the preparatory meeting.