How can evaluators help to build the field of place-based working in the UK?

We have been working on questions around place-based change for over 20 years. In this time, we have seen many examples of good work and passion. But we have also seen lots of areas of confusion. How do we define place-based working? What even is it? And are the methods we see useful to all places or all issues? 

When we started looking at the international picture, we could see that the UK is not as far along in its understanding of these things compared to other countries like the US, Canada and Australia.

This led us to believe that it is important to build a meaningful and impactful field of place-based work in the UK. For us - this is more than just understanding or refining practice at the ground level – it’s about bringing together lots of people in the system - funders, policy makers, evaluators and more – to build connections and a conception of place-based working that is more than just the sum of its parts.

A taxonomy of place-based work

In a study in partnership with Ratio and funded by Place Matters, we spent some time reviewing the evidence and codifying different types of place-based work. This led us to develop a taxonomy of different types of place-based working. You can read more about our process here: See our Substack on Place and Evidence and the final report of that first phase of work is here.

The table below gives a snapshot of the five categories we identified:

One of the distinctive features of this taxonomy is that it tries to really drill down into the mechanisms by which change occurs in each category. When we looked at the wider theory, we felt this was really missing – most definitions seem to focus on the surface level – the expressions of how place-based work was different in each place. 

To do this we first mapped out the ‘active dimensions’ of place-based change – things like scale of place and time, that will affect PBW later expressions. Then we thought critically about how these different dimensions combine to form categories. And then we unpicked the mechanisms of change in each case. Below shows an example for how we mapped out the mechanisms in Category 1:

To help us think about how our work was distinctive, we gave ourselves a metaphor: we were looking for the DNA that could help us identify and categorise different plants, rather than looking at a forest as it has grown. The diagram below tries to show this:

What this tells us is that the crucial question for thinking about the evidence to support place-based working is not the different perspectives on evidence but rather being clear about what the mechanism of change is and how can we evidence that. From that starting point then flows the usual evaluation questions of power, ownership, integrity and method that we should be asking, but being clear on the mechanism gives us strong ground to start from.

What’s next – and what does this mean for evaluation?

This is just the start of the journey. To successfully build a field we need to move questions that are grounded in organisations (e.g. what does this way of working mean for my team?) to questions that concern the whole organisation and other organisations like ours. 

This is easier said than done.  We are personally invested in developing the work and bringing others along on the journey by:

• Building a broader evidence base about different types of PBW 

• Strengthening the taxonomy through testing and validation 

• Testing our assumptions about evidence practice 

• Building a stronger network of PB practitioners, funders, evaluators, influencers, thinkers and more to check and challenge work as it develops

• Understanding more about the strengths, weaknesses and gaps in the field in the UK, and identifying where we can find inspiring examples from the international evidence base 

For evaluators specifically, routes to influence and develop the field include:

• Engaging with the wider evidence base and theory around PBW  -including our taxonomy! 

• Joining or establishing cross org working groups / COPs

• Drawing on inspiration from the international evaluation community 

• Walking the journey with us! Reach out if you’re interested:

  •  John Hitchin john@storiesofchange.co.uk  

  • Anna Waldie anna@storiesofchange.co.uk  

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