Cultural pathfinder programme
A number of pilot projects are being supported throughout Scotland to explore effective and practical ways to widen access to, and participation, in cultural activity. These Cultural Pathfinders have focused their projects on communities known to be under-represented in terms of cultural participation and are intended to produce learning that can be shared across the local authority sector. The Pathfinder programme is also exploring links between cultural provision and community planning processes.
Programme content
The selected programme covers a wide range of under-represented groups. So far, the Executive has committed a budget of nearly £650k to this over 2006-07 and 2007-08. The following links contain details of the focus and objectives of each Cultural Pathfinder: these linked pages in turn take the reader to other links containing each Pathfinder's project Evaluation Plan, Interim Report and Final Report (where these have been published).
Evaluation of the Cultural Pathfinders
Extracting maximum learning and knowledge from the pathfinders will be crucial, and all hosts are committed to gathering and disseminating information. The Executive has provided an Evaluation Toolkit and framework that will be used by all pathfinder hosts, complemented by innovative approaches that some plan to develop themselves. There will be ongoing monitoring and feedback from the projects at pre-agreed stages. The Cultural Pathfinders will also be learning from each others' progress through the Pathfinder Learning Collaborative.