Quotes from the "Politics of Evidence" Conference

In late April, the "Politics of Evidence" conference brought together (at the IDS in Brighton) development and evaluation practitioners from a rich mix of professional backgrounds and countries. Some of the papers presented have been available on the internet, such as Rosalynd Eyben's article on the The power of results and evidence artefacts. Eyben's paper is about tools initially designed to stimulate critical thinking which have mutated into instruments of confusion: For example, the log-frame was built to encourage people to reflect on the assumptions behind their "project logic" - but in most contemporary versions, the "assumptions" column has disappeared.

Evidence artefacts - an example

This is a case study prepared for the "Big Push Forward" conference next week (for links to the conference, see the extra post below). 

The example is from a real organisation, a group working on human rights.

Coming soon: Critique of results and evidence artefacts

Next week I'll attend the Big Push Forward conference at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in Brighton. For those who can't make it there, a few interesting papers are already available on the web (for example Carrots and sticks: Results and evidence artefacts and their effects | The Big Push Forward).
The final plenary session will be "live streamed" on 24 April at 15:45 (3:45 pm) UK time, under this LINK. Watch this space for post-conference musings in mid-May.