TFM Culture seeks some light touch evaluation support to provide independent reflections and learning on activities implemented under a British Council Cultural Protection Fund grant.

The project is a small grant and the scope of the evaluation can not be the deepest dive, but we hope it will offer some understanding of the impact and value of the activities.

About the Project

7oshna is an ambitious initiative to develop the Institute of African and Asian Studies folklore archive and make it more accessible to the public, especially Sudanese. It is also a social movement to increase public participation in documenting Sudanese intangible heritage, at a scale to meet the cultural crisis in the country.

The key partner is the Institute of African and Asian Studies (IAAS), part of the University of Khartoum, is a multi-disciplinary postgraduate research institution established in 1974 to promote research on Sudanese Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH).

The activities have been in three areas:

1. Technical work on the archive – digitisation, audio restoration and metadata
2. Engagement of Society with the archive and Sudanese cultural heritage more broadly through workshops, remote data collection and social media.

The Evaluation Support

The evaluation will use a mix of monitoring and outcome harvesting approaches. As well as monitoring project activity and to what extent stated objectives are achieved, this will also gather foreseen and unforeseen impacts and implications of the activity from various perspectives.

This will be conducted using the following core methods:

• Interviews with project team / change agents / harvest user (TFM / IAAS)
• Interviews with cultural ambassadors / social actors
• Interviews/feedback with workshop participants and partner organisations / social actors
• Interview with British Council focal point, other stakeholders
• Review of project documentation
• Review of social media comments/engagement
• Short Whatsapp survey to workshop participants and social media followers

Key questions will include:

• To what extent were stated project objectives achieved? To what quality?
• What went well and what could have gone better? Why and how?
• What changed, if anything as a result of the specific activity / the whole initiative?
• What were the chain of events that led to any changes identified? What, when, how?
• What does this mean for the project and for the sector?

Scope of Work

The project team will compile as much factual information and evidence as possible, and help present this in a template.

The Evaluation support will help verify, gain and provide some independent observations to strengthen the value of the short evaluation.

It is expected the evaluation consultant will not spend more than 5 days supporting the effort.