Research and Evaluation
Research at ICE
ICE’s research positions ICE as a generator and repository of knowledge and innovation for the cultural and social sector. It also develops programs to track and share outcomes, achievements and mechanisms for assessing the impact and reach of ICE’s work. Our research department identifies emerging issues, and produces submissions and briefings on important issues for the organisation.
A focus since the program was formally established in 2009 has been on building new systems and processes for evaluation, critical reflection and the exploration of impact around the longitudinal impacts and wider ‘ripple effects’ of ICE’s work. Our research program identified the strategic importance of engaging with emerging social and creative enterprise models, and built a repository of knowledge around the cumulative impacts of ICE’s work and of the needs of communities and artists in our region, building an evidence base to secure support for our major capital redevelopment project of Switch Digital Arts Centre.
Current activities include:
- ICE’s Reconciliation Action Plan
- A Sustainability Strategy for ICE
- Consolidating processes for reflection and assessment and
- Contributing to ICE’s funding strategy, awards and recognition
- Research collaborations with a number of key organisations that share learnings from evaluation and impact reflection – including Fairfield City Coucil and the Australian Human Rights Commission
Ripple Effects – ARC Linkage Research Partnership
Ripple Effects has been the major collaboration of ICE’s research program – a three year ARC Linkage led by a team of researchers from UTS, in partnership with the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts NSW.
Ripple Effects is a research study exploring emerging media and creative practices developed through and around ICE by engaging with participants, peers and the wider community. The project seeks to provide a new framework for understanding the nexus between cultural production and citizenship practices. It considers ICE as situated in and producing an ecology of relations, projects, impacts and in turn it examines the way the organisation operates, the path of individual cultural producers, specific programs and enterprises. Led by researchers from the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), the project is a partnership with new media arts and community organisation ICE, the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts NSW. The project will offer new ways to think about questions on the relation between new media and creative practices and cultural diversity, belonging and participation beyond multiculturalism.
This section of the website will be updated soon. Stay tuned.
