Create – Mapping The Experience of The Artist in The Community Scheme
Service Design | Create
Create is Ireland’s national development agency for collaborative arts, their mission is to lead the development of collaborative arts practice by enabling artists and communities to create exceptional art together.
Context Studio were asked to help understand and map the experience of the Artist in the Community (AIC) Scheme, which offers awards to enable artists and communities of place and/or interest to work together, developing and researching ideas and delivering projects. The AIC Scheme is an Arts Council initiative, managed by Create since 2002.
This project aimed to capture the lived experience of artists and communities who engage with the scheme, identifying what’s working well, surfacing challenges, and uncovering opportunities to inform the creation of more inclusive and responsive supports.
Desk research
The Context Studio team began by exploring the awards within the AIC scheme, becoming familiar with their guidelines, and the application process. We also looked at strategy, cultural diversity and inclusion reports, and annual development plans. This important groundwork helped align our research with the values and commitments of Create, while identifying early gaps and assumptions for further exploration.
Vitally this also gave us an initial understanding of the AIC scheme’s offerings and a clearer view of the scheme overall.
“North Star” Workshop
Create staff then joined us for a “North Star” workshop where we heard from the people who work on the scheme day to day. We learned how they see the journey of artists and other parties who engage with the scheme. We also heard a little of what they imagine the future of the scheme could be.
The North Star Workshop gave us further insight and raised questions we could ask artists, it also helped to align everyone’s understanding as to the direction for our research.
Interviews
We worked with Create to find a diverse list of participants who had engaged with the various awards within the scheme. This included artists who had been successful and unsuccessful in their applications, artists from historically marginalised groups, experienced artists, a graduate artist, community representatives, and an arts officer.
Interviews were conducted online and respondents were encouraged to share their experiences with the scheme – both good and bad.
Journey maps
We created three draft journey maps based on what we learned, each covering a different award within the scheme. The journey maps provide Create with a holistic view of the experience of engagement with each award, including aspects that work well, and things that might be improved.
To test our draft journey maps, with the programme participants, we hosted an online focus group for artists and community members. We worked through each of the maps, stopping at key moments to get their perspective, whether they agreed or disagreed with what was captured, and what differed in their experience.
This helped validate our findings but also allowed for some changes to be made at key moments within the journeys which the group contested.
Outcomes
After the focus group the final journey maps were created. The experience of the artist and community is broken into seven stages from ‘Awareness’ through to ‘After the project’.
The goal of these journey maps is to provide the team at Create a tool which they can use to better understand the experience of artists and communities. Both digital, and large format printed posters of the journeys were delivered, allowing the team to collaborate, and to iterate and edit these journeys over time.
These working documents will enable Create to continue to improve the awards experience, deepen their understanding of the artists and communities involved, and to align the perspectives of internal stakeholders as to how to do so.
“Working with Context Studio has been a revelation. We felt in very safe hands throughout, from initial conversations right through to the delivery of finalised user journeys, which will inform our future work. John, Áine and Harry were enthusiastic, insightful, open to feedback and were never precious about their process. As a team, we learned a lot, both about service design and the experience of our users as they navigate applying for funding. We look forward to implementing changes based on this strand of research,”
– Keelin Murray, Communications and Publishing Manager, Create
