Title
How do we understand and value the impact of what we make?

Called by
Tassos Stevens - [email protected]

Who attended?
Molly Sharpe, Lucy Neal, Sophie Brady, Adar Owuna, Maddy Costa, Andy Harmon, Andrew Lee, Caroline Pearce, Kim Heron, Hannah Gibbs, Jo Crowley, Luca Rutherford, Bethany Wells, Tarek Iskander, Jasmine Castledine and some more too.

Summary of discussion
I introduced the question because myself and others from Coney are trying to understand how change happens, and the role of play in enabling it. And we’re then developing practice around impact frameworks, in order to understand better the impact which happens, then better to design for it, and only lastly the better to measure it. Understanding before design before measurement.

We’ve got a key point in our manifesto for this exploration - the process of measuring impact needs to be for participants/respondents as much as it is for us as an organisation and any stakeholders. So it has to be fun, meaningful, responsive, and relevant.

I presented a top and tail wrapped around the usual format of open space conversation.

At the top, people got into smaller groups and interviewed each other with these questions about a project they might have made or played -
- who is engaged? or who is it made for, made by and made with?
- what are the possible impacts? for each and all of the above
- how do we know?

Whatever they got from these smaller conversations, they took then into our bigger group conversation.

At the tail, I gave everyone a card and asked them to reflect on our conversation and pick one nugget - my current favourite noun for useful stuff - from the conversation which had particularly struck them - a useful or new or surprising thing. And to write that nugget on their card. I collected them and took photos to make a document of the conversation. Which follow from the next page.

I shared that I reckon that when designing play which might spark change, we need to build the opening and reflection - like this top and tail - to wrap around whatever is the play - like this conversation.

Thanks to everyone for being there.

And you, dear reader, if you have any thoughts or questions you want to ask, please free to email me :)