Prove It!

‘Attempts to improve deprived areas should not be judged just on whether houses are better kept, streets are cleaner and spaces greener, but on how people living in these areas feel and act. We need to be able to measure whether their attitude has changed, whether they have more or less confidence, greater or fewer skills and whether we have helped them achieve their hopes and aspirations.’

Tony Hawkhead, Chief Executive, Groundwork

Prove It! is an evaluation tool designed to assess the impact of community-based regeneration projects and was first introduced to monitor the outcomes of the Barclays SiteSavers programme. The methodology behind Prove It! was developed by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) in partnership with Barclays and Groundwork.

Prove It! grew out of the recognition that what gets measured, matters, and that many positive outcomes of regeneration go unnoticed because only the things that are easy to count get counted. Counting how many trees have been planted or footpaths mended just doesn’t capture the real impact on local people’s quality of life.

Prove It! is about keeping evaluation simple, manageable and possible within the limited resources that small–scale projects have available to them. An approach involving data collection methods that are fun and easy to use can encourage ownership of the project and make it more likely that evaluation becomes part of the culture of an organisation, rather than a burden.

The principle behind Prove It! is to make the collection of data part of the process of regeneration itself. Many of the overriding aims of a project (for example, improving the social capital of a community) can be achieved by involving local people in its evaluation as well as its delivery. The experience of using Prove It! on Barclays SiteSavers projects demonstrates that evaluation can add real value, build the capacity of local groups effectively capture the impact of a project or process on quality of life.

For more detailed information on Prove It! please click here

Key Findings of Prove It!

Using Prove It! Groundwork and Barclays set out to assess the impact of Barclays SiteSavers projects. NEF’s overarching analysis concluded that the projects made a significant difference to the development of trust, connections, skills and confidence in the communities. As a consequence members of the evaluation became more active in articulating and reaching their renewal objectives.

Diverse connections	80% of project participants had enjoyed a conversation with a new person of a different background in the last six months.
New friendships	Those involved in a project as participants gained an average of five new friends each by the end of the project.
Community know how	Those in the wider community who definitely knew who to contact in the neighbourhood to affect change grew three fold to 35%.
Fear of Crime	Of the wider community, 86% now felt safe out and about in the local area in the day compared to 55% before the project had been carried out.
Active Citizenship	Those involved in Barclays SiteSavers go on to be active in different ways locally, eg two participants became parish councillors.