Published on 24 August 2026 by Inspire to Change

To support purpose-driven change and changemakers around the globe.

Be & Become, Remember & Create, Learn & Unlearn, Disrupt & Liberate.

Creative Evaluation and Engagement (CE&E) is shorthand for developmental, principles-focused, arts-infused evaluation for social change. The CE&E framework is a particular way of learning and adapting for complex, equity-focused social change work. CE&E is co-creative, full-sensory, place-based, culturally grounded, principles-driven, and responsive. CE&E weaves together funders, organizational staff, community members, artists, and creative evaluators to support coherent and collaborative change.

Creative Evaluation and Engagement (CE&E) operates at the intersection of critical evaluative thinking, creative engagement, and social justice, where co-creation, mutual respect, and community change can thrive and support transformation personally and collectively.

Creative Evaluation and Engagement (CE&E) theory was developed by Nora Murphy Johnson, A. Rafael Johnson, and Michael Quinn Patton. The theory is based on the following understandings about people and transformative change:

Why Creative Evaluation and Engagement Matters Now

We live in a time of profound complexity. The challenges facing communities—systemic inequity, climate disruption, political polarisation, and the erosion of trust—are not linear problems with tidy solutions. They are emergent, adaptive, and deeply human. In this context, traditional evaluation methods that reduce change to a set of static indicators often miss the very heart of what makes social change transformative: the shifts in relationships, identity, power, and possibility that occur when people come together to reimagine their world.

Creative Evaluation and Engagement (CE&E) was born from a recognition that evaluation itself can either reinforce the status quo or become a force for liberation. When evaluation is co-creative, full-sensory, place-based, culturally grounded, principles-driven, and responsive, it stops being an external judgment and becomes an integral part of the change process. It helps funders, staff, community members, artists, and evaluators see themselves as partners in a shared journey rather than subjects and auditors. This shift is not merely philosophical; it has practical consequences. CE&E produces insights that are more accurate, more actionable, and more likely to be owned by those who must act on them.

At Inspire to Change, we believe that the way we learn about change should mirror the change we want to see. If we want communities to be creative, equitable, and resilient, then our evaluation practices must be creative, equitable, and resilient too. CE&E is our answer to the question: How can we know what is working without flattening the very complexity that makes the work meaningful?

The Roots of CE&E: A Developmental and Principles-Focused Approach

CE&E draws on two powerful traditions in evaluation: developmental evaluation and principles-focused evaluation. Developmental evaluation, as articulated by Michael Quinn Patton, is designed for situations of high uncertainty and innovation, where the path forward is not known in advance. It supports real-time learning and adaptation, helping teams navigate complexity by asking evaluative questions as the work unfolds. Principles-focused evaluation, also developed by Patton, shifts the focus from rigid indicators to the principles that guide action. It asks: What are the core values and commitments that should drive this work, and how well are we honouring them in practice?

CE&E integrates these approaches with arts-based and culturally responsive methods to create a holistic framework. The arts are not an add-on; they are central to how we generate knowledge. A mural, a poem, a drumming circle, or a community theatre piece can reveal truths that surveys and interviews often miss. These forms of expression engage the whole person—body, emotion, memory, and imagination—and they are particularly effective for surfacing the experiences of those who have been marginalised or silenced by conventional research methods.

The framework is also deeply rooted in the understanding that change is not just about external outcomes but about internal transformation. As the existing text states, CE&E is based on particular understandings about people and transformative change. These include the recognition that people are not empty vessels to be filled with information but active meaning-makers who bring their own histories, cultures, and wisdom to the table. Change that lasts is change that is co-created, not imposed.

How CE&E Works in Practice

In practice, CE&E is a collaborative process that unfolds in cycles of inquiry, creation, reflection, and adaptation. It begins with building relationships and establishing trust. Evaluators and artists work alongside community members and organisational staff to understand the context, the values, and the hopes that animate the work. This is not a one-time needs assessment but an ongoing dialogue that deepens over time.

From there, the team co-designs evaluation questions and methods. These might include storytelling circles, photovoice projects, participatory mapping, or creative writing workshops. The data that emerge are not just numbers but narratives, images, and performances that capture the texture of change. Analysis is also co-creative: participants help interpret what the findings mean and how they should inform next steps. This ensures that the learning is not extracted and taken away but remains embedded in the community where it can do the most good.

Throughout the process, CE&E practitioners pay close attention to power dynamics. They work to create spaces where everyone can contribute fully, regardless of their role or background. This requires humility, cultural humility, and a willingness to be changed by the process oneself. As the framework’s tagline suggests, CE&E is about being and becoming, remembering and creating, learning and unlearning, disrupting and liberating—for everyone involved.

The Role of Artists and Creative Practitioners

Artists play a vital role in CE&E, not as decorators but as co-evaluators and cultural workers. They bring skills in facilitation, improvisation, and aesthetic framing that help groups access deeper layers of experience. An artist might help a community turn a set of interview transcripts into a spoken word performance that reveals hidden themes. Or they might design a visual installation that makes evaluation findings accessible to people who would never read a technical report.

This integration of art and evaluation is not about making evaluation more palatable; it is about making it more truthful. Art can hold ambiguity, contradiction, and emotion in ways that linear logic cannot. It can give voice to the unsayable and make visible the invisible. In a CE&E process, the line between data collection and creative expression blurs, and that is precisely the point. The process itself becomes a form of engagement that builds community and capacity, even as it generates knowledge.

CE&E and Equity: A Commitment to Justice

At its core, CE&E is an equity practice. It recognises that traditional evaluation has often been used as a tool of control, reinforcing the very inequities it claims to measure. By centering the voices of those most affected by social change work, CE&E seeks to redistribute the power to define what counts as success. This is not a neutral stance; it is a deliberate commitment to justice.

The principles that guide CE&E—such as co-creation, cultural grounding, and responsiveness—are themselves expressions of equity. They demand that we attend to who is in the room, whose knowledge is valued, and how decisions are made. They ask us to be transparent about our own positions and to be willing to challenge the systems that maintain inequality, including within our own organisations and practices.

For funders, this means shifting from a focus on compliance to a focus on learning. For organisations, it means building internal capacity for reflection and adaptation. For communities, it means being treated as partners rather than beneficiaries. CE&E offers a pathway to these shifts, but it requires courage and a willingness to let go of familiar ways of working.

Learning More and Getting Involved

If you are new to Creative Evaluation and Engagement, we invite you to explore the resources on this site. Our About page provides an overview of who we are and what we do. The Mission and Vision page goes deeper into the values that drive our work. To see how CE&E is applied in real-world settings, visit Our Practice. And if you are curious about the people behind the framework, meet Our Team.

We also welcome conversations with funders, nonprofit leaders, artists, and community members who are interested in bringing a more creative, equitable, and developmental approach to their evaluation and learning efforts. Whether you are just beginning to question conventional evaluation or are ready to dive into a full CE&E process, we would love to hear from you. There are also opportunities to join our work through Careers and the Research Coordinator role.

Ultimately, CE&E is not just a methodology; it is a way of being in the world. It is an invitation to remember that change is possible, that creativity is a form of knowledge, and that we are all, in our own ways, changemakers. We hope you will join us in this ongoing journey of becoming.

Written by Inspire to Change