Evidencing Impact: Turning Insight into Evidence

Across the heritage, arts, and community sectors, the conversation about wellbeing has never been more relevant. Projects that connect people to history, place, and culture are often described as transformative, improving confidence, belonging, and emotional resilience. These accounts are powerful and moving, yet they are not always supported by the kind of robust and demonstrable evidence that helps decision-makers, funders, and policymakers understand their true value.

In recent years, national policy has placed increasing emphasis on the need for measurable social value and wellbeing outcomes. HM Treasury’s Green Book and its supplementary guidance on wellbeing now encourage the use of wellbeing data in the appraisal and evaluation of public projects. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has also introduced the Valuing Culture and Heritage Capital Framework, linking heritage engagement directly to wellbeing and social impact. Likewise, the National Lottery Heritage Fund requires applicants to evidence change through structured evaluation, making wellbeing outcomes a recognised component of project delivery and reporting. Together, these developments reflect a growing expectation that heritage initiatives demonstrate their contribution to individual and community wellbeing through credible, transparent evidence.

A recent systematic review undertaken by members of The Mimir Collective explored how wellbeing is defined, measured, and reported across heritage engagement projects. The review analysed studies from the UK and internationally, covering a wide range of activities from archaeological fieldwork and museum engagement to creative heritage and place-based initiatives. The results were encouraging. Across the evidence base, heritage engagement was consistently associated with improvements in mood, reductions in anxiety and depression, and strengthened feelings of identity, purpose, and social connection.

However, the review also revealed important gaps. Definitions of wellbeing were often vague or inconsistent, with many projects using the term as a catch-all for everything from happiness and life satisfaction to recovery and empowerment. Some evaluations relied heavily on personal testimonies without supporting data, while others applied psychometric tools that were not designed for the type of change being measured. Many studies also used the terms “mental health” and “wellbeing” interchangeably, despite these being conceptually distinct.

This variation reflects the creativity and diversity of practice across the sector, but it also makes it difficult to compare results or build a collective evidence base. Without shared frameworks, the sector risks producing fragmented data that is difficult to translate into policy or long-term funding support. The findings of the review highlight the need for more coherence and transparency in how wellbeing is evaluated within heritage work.

Several key recommendations emerged:

• Define wellbeing clearly within each project and distinguish it from related concepts such as mental health or quality of life.
• Choose measures that align with intended outcomes. A project focused on reflection and meaning-making, for example, should not rely solely on short-term happiness scales.
• Combine qualitative and quantitative evidence. Stories, interviews, and creative outputs capture depth and nuance, while validated measures add comparability and credibility.
• Prioritise inclusivity and accessibility. Evaluation should be co-produced wherever possible, allowing participants’ voices and experiences to shape both design and interpretation.
• Ensure transparency and reflexivity. Evaluation is most valuable when it captures learning as well as outcomes, showing what works, for whom, and under what conditions.

For practitioners, this means planning for evaluation from the outset. Embedding wellbeing outcomes into project design, rather than adding them as an afterthought, ensures that evidence collection is both meaningful and proportionate. Small changes, such as choosing measures that reflect participants’ values or co-designing evaluation questions, can transform how impact is understood and communicated.

Evidencing impact is not simply a technical exercise. It is a process of understanding how change happens and ensuring that the ways we measure that change are as rich and reflective as the experiences themselves. It allows practitioners to refine practice, funders to make informed decisions, and communities to see their own growth represented in credible, meaningful data.

Future evaluation must also consider whose wellbeing is being measured and whose voices are missing. Ensuring that evidence reflects the diversity of the communities heritage seeks to serve is essential for creating fair and inclusive practice.

Building a stronger evidence base is ultimately about culture change. When evaluation is seen not as a reporting obligation but as a shared process of learning, it becomes a creative and collaborative act. It allows heritage organisations to understand their work more deeply, communicate its value more clearly, and continue to improve the ways in which they contribute to collective wellbeing.

The findings from this review underline a simple truth: heritage engagement makes a real difference to people’s lives. It enhances wellbeing, fosters connection, and creates spaces where meaning and identity can be explored. The next step is ensuring that the evidence we collect about those changes is as thoughtful and rigorous as the work itself.

By moving towards shared definitions, coherent frameworks, and balanced methods, the heritage sector can begin to tell a more unified and compelling story about its impact. In doing so, we can move beyond describing positive change to demonstrating it clearly, consistently, and with confidence.