Partner
sam-culture
Consultancy evaluating arts, museums and heritage to help organisations learn
About the partnership
sam-culture is a cultural and heritage consultancy based in Hove, led by its director Pam Jarvis. It helps arts, museum and heritage organisations understand what works, measure what matters and make confident decisions, through evaluation, strategy, audience insight and organisational learning. Pam grew the practice out of her earlier work as director of Sussex Arts Marketing, and has more than 25 years’ experience and over 50 evaluations to her name.
Its work spans national funders, museums, festivals and major cultural programmes. Highlights include evaluating the National Lottery Heritage Fund’s Strategic Review 4 grants programme and the multi-year Layers of London digital heritage project, Arts Council England’s A Night Less Ordinary free theatre tickets scheme for under-26s, and the national Family Arts Campaign. Pam also co-authored Open Up: Museums for Everyone, a UK-wide programme with 20 museums exploring how to diversify audiences, and worked on the audience development strategy for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games cultural programme. She was a member of the Centre for Cultural Value’s Evaluation Principles Working Group.
Always Possible and sam-culture work together on cultural evaluation, combining our research, economic and place expertise with sam-culture’s depth in arts and heritage evaluation and audience insight.
Our main shared project is Escalate Arts, a multi-year cultural partnership in Spelthorne, Surrey, bringing together Surrey County Council, Spelthorne Borough Council, Ashford Youth Club and Artswork to open up creative opportunities and pathways for young people. As independent evaluator, we brought Pam in as our evaluation and impact specialist. She designed the programme’s evaluation framework around its Theory of Change, built in Arts Council England’s reporting requirements, and is leading the mid-point review and final evaluation, drawing evidence together across partners and programme strands to support learning, accountability and future scaling.
Explore your next move.
Book a free discovery call with our CEO, Richard Freeman — or send us a brief and we’ll tell you honestly whether we’re the right people, and who else to try if not.