Jen Gilomen

Stories Have Impact, But How Do We Know?

Posted by Jen Gilomen, Apr 30, 2012 2 comments


Jen Gilomen

Jen Gilomen

We’ve all had the experience of sitting in a dark theater and being moved by a compelling documentary story. And as documentary mediamakers, many of us have felt that power materialize during animated discussions that occur with and among audience members when the lights come up for the Q&A.

But how do we really know if our films are having an impact beyond the walls of the theater, and how do we know that our film is causing something besides “clicks” and “likes” online?

At Bay Area Video Coalition, we’ve come a long way in our understanding of impact evaluation and its purpose. It used to be that evaluation was another box to check off in order to satisfy the requirements of our funders. We collected surveys at the end of each training or program, and when funding allowed, we began to track our program participants and projects over a longer period of time.

Our thinking about the purpose of evaluation began to shift, however, when we received a multi-year grant from the National Science Foundation that included a funded, dedicated evaluator to help us design and implement an evaluation not just for reporting purposes, but to create feedback loops that would shape future programming throughout the program’s lifecycle.

Participating in the design of this evaluation freed us to shift our focus from one of conducting surveys and basic reporting (for others, usually as an afterthought) to one of viewing evaluation as an opportunity to better understand the real and long-term impact of our work—for ourselves, so we could become more effective.

It’s a much scarier, but ultimately more meaningful question to ask yourself: are the strategies that you are employing truly effective in the long-term?

The beauty of seeking the answer is this: if you learn what works and what doesn’t, you have the opportunity to adapt and change your approaches to do what is most effective. And that makes every task you perform more meaningful and rewarding.

We communicate through nonfiction narratives because we fundamentally believe that doing so increases human understanding and moves people to think and act differently as a result: it effects social change, we presume.

But how do we know this, and how do we know which strategies and platforms are effective in moving our audiences so we can continue to use them in our work?

In our increasingly networked, multi-platform world, where audiences are taking raw content to create their own narratives, playing with questions and shaping opinions, and even spreading the spark of a global revolution as quickly as an image can “go live” on a streaming site, how can we as storytellers best support the audience trends while still accomplishing our social change goals?

Our jobs as storytellers are still the same: we need to tell a compelling story, one that causes our audiences to think, feel, and act.

In the multi-platform world, though, there are new challenges and opportunities for connecting our stories more directly to those thoughts, emotions, and actions. For one, we can turn what was once a passive viewing experience into conversations and actions, offline and online, and help audiences access our stories when and where they are.

We can support our stories with in-depth information and data that increase meaning based on a user’s inherent interest, curiosities, and inclinations.

And lastly, and possibly most importantly, we can gather much more information about who is moved by our stories, how they accessed those stories, and even, potentially, what they did as a result.  And what we learn from the latter can help us shape the stories themselves.

What do you think?

2 responses for Stories Have Impact, But How Do We Know?

Comments

April 30, 2012 at 4:16 pm

Terrific piece. The "opportunity to adapt and change" is what feedback loops should deliver.

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Lindsey says
May 01, 2012 at 11:01 am

Great piece! So important for us, the Arts, to be able to tell the story of our impact! Have you begun to implement these feedback loops? What are you finding? What is working?

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