Love Leeds Parks: in depth evaluation and shared learning
A couple of years ago, we were introduced to Love Leeds Parks by our friends at Hyde Park Source. They were looking for an evaluator to support them in producing an evaluation of their Heritage Lottery Funded programme. Our ears pricked up, because they wanted to focus on reflection and sharing learning, on understanding what’s worked about their innovative approach and the impacts of the project for the communities involved.
‘This wasn’t just a tick-box exercise for us, we wanted to explore what the project really meant to people – not just the headline impacts, but the ripple effects too – and highlight the challenges that lay ahead.’
We were delighted to help! The Love Leeds Park team had some really comprehensive monitoring and evaluation data that they had been recording and using to track the project – digesting this gave us an insight into what happened over the two years of the project. It was great to have this to dig into. We also got to speak with some incredible people from organisations across Leeds’ diverse communities - groups trying to connect with our parks and green spaces, find ways of tackling inequality, take climate action, support diverse communities. Through these conversations, we learned about how effective the Love Leeds Park approach was in creating and amplifying impacts in those communities. The project ethos around co-production, trusting grassroots groups to know what’s best in their parks, and finding practical and fun ways to tackle challenges together was inspiring. We are thrilled that the learning summary and case studies we produced are now helping Love Leeds Park to:
‘… share the results of this evaluation with our wider community, both celebrating the model’s successes but also uncovering opportunities to build on the project’s learnings.’
You can find out more about this wonderful project and how we helped here.
‘This wasn’t just a tick-box exercise for us, we wanted to explore what the project really meant to people – not just the headline impacts, but the ripple effects too – and highlight the challenges that lay ahead.’
We were delighted to help! The Love Leeds Park team had some really comprehensive monitoring and evaluation data that they had been recording and using to track the project – digesting this gave us an insight into what happened over the two years of the project. It was great to have this to dig into. We also got to speak with some incredible people from organisations across Leeds’ diverse communities - groups trying to connect with our parks and green spaces, find ways of tackling inequality, take climate action, support diverse communities. Through these conversations, we learned about how effective the Love Leeds Park approach was in creating and amplifying impacts in those communities. The project ethos around co-production, trusting grassroots groups to know what’s best in their parks, and finding practical and fun ways to tackle challenges together was inspiring. We are thrilled that the learning summary and case studies we produced are now helping Love Leeds Park to:
‘… share the results of this evaluation with our wider community, both celebrating the model’s successes but also uncovering opportunities to build on the project’s learnings.’
You can find out more about this wonderful project and how we helped here.
