CASE STUDY 2

The London Borough of Southwark submitted a proposal relating to creative cities.

The project synthesis is as follows:

“Current theories of regional competitiveness emphasise the significance of "soft" factors such as human, cultural (knowledge and creativity) and socio-institutional capital, environmental quality. Quality living environments and access to environmental and cultural amenities are among factors that attract investment and people to a location. A creative work force, including artists has been identified by a number of regions and cities as being a strategic priority, vital to innovation.Simarly, the European Commission’s recent report ‘Culture and the Economy’, emphasises that creative and cultural industries are now currently one of the most significant growth sectors for the economy in terms of GDP and added value and that they are a key source of ‘innovation’ and employment.Within this context therefore our aim is to set up an exchange network of cities on the theme of ‘innovation and cultural clusters’ and to examine how creative and cultural industries best impact on economic growth, innovation and social cohesion.”

Here is the score for the Southwark project against the evaluation criteria:
EAP Assessment
Crit 1- Relevance of proposal and European value added 17
Crit 2- Coherence of proposal 17
Crit 3 - Quality of expected results 15
Crit 4 - Quality of partnership and lead partner 13
Crit 5 - Budget and Finances Development phase 8
Total 70


Here are the evaluation report comments (in black) provided by the Urbact Secretariat and our observations/concerns in red:


The project would contribute to the main objectives of the URBACT II pro-gramme.
Having established this it is unclear why the score is 17 out of 25.
The analysis of the nature of the problem is average, not extremely convincing; as the expected results are not very innovative, and they would not bring a clear added value compared to present or even past initiatives.
If this is the case why a score of 17 out of 25. The same as criteria one. Here the comments highlight the subjectivity that seems to be a strong characteristic of the evaluation process.
The quality of the strategy is also average. There is not a very strong focus on the exchange of experiences.
This comment is bizarre, as the whole focus naturally is on the exchange of experience. If this were the case it could not justify the above average score of 13 out of 20 that the project was given.
The activities and outputs of the Project Development Phase are average. It must be emphasised that there is no serious consideration of baseline study (which does not appear with a specific heading in the schedule of the Project Development Phase). The nature of this project would need a very serious in-depth baseline study.
This is simply wrong. The expression of Interest specifically mentions a base line study in the action plan for the development phase .
The Lead Partner is experienced in the topic, as well as in European exchanges of experiences; nevertheless, the partnership is not balanced, and the diversity of partners would not benefit its development: the partners are simply too different.
The partners are Riga, Lecce, Bacau and Madrid. What makes this “unbalanced”? Why is the diversity too much?


Conclusions

What the two case studies highlight are the following points :
There has not been good practice used in the evaluation process. Each project needs to be moderated by at least two other evaluators. This is standard procedure in EU programmes
Evaluators should score projects against each of the sub-indicators for each of the criteria. That is to say that for each of the 8 indicators for criteria there should a score allocated which the totals up to 25. This would reduce the impressionistic evaluations that the two case studies highlight.
The quality of feedback to candidates needs to be improved and the comments should be grouped to each specific criteria.
There needs to be an appeals procedure established. This is also standard good practice.