Blog

Assessing the value of public investment in the screen and digital sector requires more than counting jobs created or production spend. While headline economic figures are important, they only tell part of the story. Public funding often generates broader, longer-lasting impacts that standard impact assessments rarely quantify. Our recent impact assessment of the Welsh Government’s Creative Wales Production Funding programme (covering 2020/21 to 2024/25) set out to address th

Two years ago, Wavehill was commissioned by S4C to undertake an impact assessment of S4C’s activities over the 2022/23 financial year. The scope of our assessment was wide, covering the broadcaster’s economic, social, cultural and linguistic impacts. We found that S4C was a core anchor institution for the creative sector in Wales, supporting jobs across Wales, generating a healthy return on licence fee funding, and collaborating with a wide range of businesses and institution

I’ve been undertaking evaluations using a ‘realist evaluation’  approach recently. Rather than simply asking "does it work?"  a realist approach asks three key questions: What works? For whom? And in what circumstances?  The focus is on understanding the underlying mechanisms (how and why something works) and the contexts that activate or block those mechanisms. I think it’s an approach that helps us move beyond surface-level results to understand what actually drives change.

Every heritage-focused project has a unique story to tell. Evaluation is crucial for uncovering and sharing a project’s journey and is...

The food and drink sector is one of Wales’s largest and most strategically important business sectors, and as a consequence, it has...

Following our transition to an employee ownership (EO) model, we explore the opportunities and challenges involved

This ERDF evaluation provides lessons learnt to support local growth, we hope they are taken on by practitioners across the UK in the future

In recent years, we have noticed a shift in the research and evaluation landscape. This has been driven by a growing demand amongst...

Since its inception in 1982, S4C has played a key role in supporting, promoting and nurturing the creative sector in Wales. We were...