Evaluating CDF3 funding for Arts Council England

Steer Economic Development has been commissioned by Arts Council England to deliver the initial scoping and set-up phase for an evaluation of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport's Cultural Development Fund Round 3 (CDF3). CDF3 is a £30m fund aiming to deliver cultural, primarily capital, projects in eight local areas across England. The Fund seeks to create a thriving cultural and creative sector through building infrastructure, supporting businesses, and hosting creative and cultural events.

The scoping study includes five key stages:

• Scoping and logic model development for both the eight projects and the programme;
• Appraisal of evaluation methods for CDF3, including consideration of counterfactual approaches;
• Development of a monitoring framework, including core indicators; design of data collection tools and implementation with projects; 
• Collection and analysis of baseline data for core metrics to provide a pre-position in which to assess progress at a later stage; and
• Final evaluation scoping report which will set out the recommended methodology for the impact evaluation to be implemented at a later stage.