About This Project
National Youth Dance Company (NYDC) recruits a cohort of young, talented dancers each year along with a guest artistic director to produce and tour a piece of contemporary dance. Since 2016, Shared Intelligence has worked with NYDC to evaluate the company, with a particular focus on each annual cohort. Along with understanding the impact of NYDC on its cohort of dancers, we have helped NYDC develop a theory of change to explain what works, in what circumstances, and why. In 2023 Si worked with NYDC to produce a 10-year evaluation report, highlighting the main impacts and successes of the programme over the last decade, providing evidence and insight to enable NYDC to plan their next decade.
These evaluations are a good example of Si’s approach of integrating evaluation and learning into programme development. We are able to help clients understand the lived experience of participants, beneficiaries, and stakeholders and use that insight to inform action and programme development. In the case of NYDC, this has enabled them to identify important aspects of their programme design – for example, the huge confidence boost that the dancers receive from performing on Sadler’s mainstage. It has also helped identify the most important pieces of evidence for their long-term sustainability – that nine out of ten NYDC young people who join NYDC go on to some form of work or training in dance or the performing arts.