Evaluator/Audience Research Tender Pack, Kiplin Hall and Gardens

Background

Kiplin Hall CIO runs Kiplin Hall and Gardens, a Jacobean House and 90 acres of grounds located in the heart of rural North Yorkshire, half way between Richmond and Northallerton.

The Opportunity

Through the generous support on National Lottery Heritage Fund and Thanks to National Lottery Players, Kiplin has received a grant to develop our approach to interpretation and deploy new interpretation at our soon to be built Welcome Centre, in two rooms within the Hall and around the gardens and grounds as well as digitally. We will be working with two project partners, Northdale and the Refugee Council, as well as local residents, visitors and our volunteers to help us develop our new interpretive approach. We are looking for an evaluator/researcher to help us assess our audiences’ thoughts on our interpretation and to undertake evaluation of the project at the end.

Project Objective

The objective of this tender is to recruit a freelance evaluator who will help us with the two stages of evaluation we need to undertake to help us deliver our project.

Outcomes

There are three key outcomes of the evaluation:

• That we can assess people’s reaction to our interpretation and identify areas that interest, engage and inspire people’s interests most so we can focus our research and development into those areas.
• To track people’s attitudes to our interpretation across three points in time (initial baseline, when seeing proposals at the midpoint and after the final installation) to track how people’s perceptions of the interpretation have been changed through the project
• To evaluate the experiences of the people and organisations who participate in the project. This is our first major attempts at community engagement and collaborative curation, and we want to understand what went well and what we can improve on to inform future project planning.

Outputs

• A survey/s that we can use with visitors, volunteers, residents and project partners at three stages of the project (beginning, middle and post installation) to track people’s feelings about the interpretation currently on site, the ideas being developed and the final installation and have data we can track across the three stages to be able to see how things have shifted.
• An evaluation survey that can be used with participants in the project (we plan to recruit project teams from our volunteers, local residents and from our two partner organisations) to evaluate how working on the project has gone to help inform planning for future community engagement projects.
• A report which summarises the results and outcomes of both surveys at the end point of the project

Points for consideration

• Kiplin has a trained team of volunteers and staff who can deliver surveys on site, either digitally or physically, so there will be no need to include any on site work of that nature in the tender.
• We will be working with people with learning difficulties and refugees so this should be factored into the survey design.
• We have a separate budget for translation should that be required.

Budget and Length

The overall budget for this section of the project is £10,000. This is to include VAT and all other costs.

We would like to commence the first survey collection with visitors as soon as possible and ideally before the end of September. The mid-point survey will be gathered in July/August 2023 and the end of the project surveys and final reports will be in April/May 2024.

Project Management

The line management of this contract will sit with Alice Rose, Programming Curator at Kiplin Hall and Gardens.

How to Apply

If you would like to discuss this opportunity, please contact James Etherington at director@kiplinhall.co.uk with queries or to arrange a phone or zoom call to discuss the tender.

Please send your tender to director@kiplinhall.co.uk Please include a CV or portfolio showing your previous experience and a covering letter setting out how you will deliver the outputs and outcomes. Please submit your tender by 9am on Thursday 1^st September.