Introduction: Re-evaluating Evaluation

Abstract

This introductory chapter situates Artful Evaluation within the dynamic landscape of participatory arts, health, and wellbeing in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Arising from the 2023 Precarity, Creative Arts, and Wellbeing Symposium, the chapter foregrounds the need to re-evaluate evaluation itself—challenging dominant social impact paradigms and advocating for methods that reflect the holistic, embodied, and relational nature of arts-based practices. It explores how creative methodologies, Indigenous knowledge systems, and transdisciplinary approaches are reshaping conceptions of value, evidence, and impact. In critiquing standardised, instrumentalist frameworks, the authors call for a move towards more ethical, context-sensitive, and co-designed evaluation practices that reflect the lived experiences of communities. The chapter also introduces ‘artful evaluation’ as an agile, critical, and creative practice that integrates evaluation into the artistic process. This book, therefore, aims to shift evaluative discourse and practice by placing values, equity, and imagination at the centre of participatory arts in health and wellbeing.