Presented below are RMR’s Evaluation Reports for Make/Shift, the Creative People and Places project for Amber Valley, Derbyshire.

Creative People and Places is an Arts Council England funding programme which aims to engage new people in the arts through commissioning projects in areas of low arts engagement.

Make/Shift began in 2022, and was funded for four year. Full evaluations were produced for 2023/4 (Year 2) and 2025/26 (Year 4) – the latter also contains a review of the four years of funding (the Phase) as a whole.

Available for each year are:

  • A full Evaluation Report
  • A Summary
  • Appendices

In addition, case studies written for both evaluations – these are available for download below. The 2025/26 case studies did not appear in the final evaluation report.

2025/26 Evaluation Report

Case Studies

2025/26

Case Study Introduction (PDF, 642KB) accompanies the 2025/26 case studies, providing an overview of Make/Shift’s model for those who have not read the full Evaluation Report or who are not familiar with the programme’s work.

Case Study 1: Flows (to be released) investigates the financial movements emerging from testing alternative ways of distributing funding in local communities, and the different types of value generated.

Case Study 2: Movers and Shakers (PDF, 323KB) explores the development of the Community Movers and Shakers Fund.

Case Study 3: Neighbourhood Creative Agents (PDF, 469KB) looks at how Make/Shift develops local residents as creative leaders in their own neighbourhoods.

Case Study 4: Opening up collectively (PDF, 168KB) considers the devolution of decision-making through an online platform that lets community groups manage money in a transparent way.

Case Study 5: The power of storytelling to connect (PDF, 159KB)shows how ‘narrative’ can be used to tell the stories of individuals, communities and places – and in doing so create connections.

Case Study 6: Wayfinding – Experiments in iterative learning (to be released) reflects on experiments with different forms of iterative learning – how they weave together feedback loops to continually inform programme decisions.

2023/24

The four case studies consider the ways in which Make/Shift’s approaches have been realised. Within each, we explicitly consider the approaches used, as well as noting outcomes and learnings.

Storyteller in Residence (PDF, 196KB) looks at how Make/Shift used people’s own narratives to highlight the making that already occurs within everyday lives and build connections.

The Golden Glue Awards (PDF, 181KB) examines a celebration of community makers who were sticking the community together – an event that brought together friends and collaborators to mark (almost) a year of Make/Shift.

Makers in Residence (PDF, 293K) explores how to create opportunities for connection through making.

Make/Shift Socials (PDF, 128KB) sees how the programme brought local organisations and connectors together through making and connecting.

Note, these are extracts from the full 2023/24 report.

2023/24 Evaluation Report

Make/Shift Evaluation Report (July 2024) was written by Dr Ruth Melville with Catherine Doran and Rebecca Ranson.

Our work focused on Make/Shift’s approaches and underlying principles, producing a deep evaluation that surfaces what Make/Shift is trying to achieve.

To do this, we explicitly assess the ‘How’ of the project – as demonstrated in four case studies.