UK-based with international reach, FRY Creative is a new consultancy established by three friends and colleagues.Since Autumn 2021, Fabio Thomas, Richard Hawley and Yasmin Damji have been collectively responsible for designing and delivering the evaluation of both the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games Cultural Programme and UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK, a £120m ground-breaking celebration of UK creativity.Together they bring decades of evaluation experience, a deep and broad… Show more UK-based with international reach, FRY Creative is a new consultancy established by three friends and colleagues.Since Autumn 2021, Fabio Thomas, Richard Hawley and Yasmin Damji have been collectively responsible for designing and delivering the evaluation of both the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games Cultural Programme and UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK, a £120m ground-breaking celebration of UK creativity.Together they bring decades of evaluation experience, a deep and broad understanding of working closely with cultural organisations and diverse communities, and a strong understanding of navigating and reporting to a wide variety of national and international funding bodies, including Arts Council England, Birmingham City Council, National Lottery Heritage Fund, Spirit of 2012, British Council, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, National Lottery Community Fund, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, the governments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and national funders of Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Show less

Delivering cultural evaluation, social research and data-driven strategic consultancy direct to clients, and on behalf of agencies and consultancies.

Designed, implemented and managed delivery of 6 complex and interweaving monitoring evaluation frameworks rolled out across 200+ arts, cultural and heritage projects spread across the West MidlandsManaged a large, six-figure budget, investing in 7 delivery partners for these evaluation frameworks across quantitative and qualitative workLiaised with, and reported to, evaluation leads at 11 arts, cultural and heritage funders across the UK and the world, bridging the gap between… Show more Designed, implemented and managed delivery of 6 complex and interweaving monitoring evaluation frameworks rolled out across 200+ arts, cultural and heritage projects spread across the West MidlandsManaged a large, six-figure budget, investing in 7 delivery partners for these evaluation frameworks across quantitative and qualitative workLiaised with, and reported to, evaluation leads at 11 arts, cultural and heritage funders across the UK and the world, bridging the gap between the Commonwealth Games Theory of Change, and the strategic investment of these partnersOversaw design and implementation data collection tools and processes for qualitative and quantitative research, empowering projects and our internal team to engage with the programme, and make best use of the data collected for their own needsWorked with on-the-ground delivery, arts, cultural and heritage organisations to design bespoke data collection tools, and additional project-level evaluation outcomes and outputs, for use in their projects, empowering non-evaluation specialists to feel ownership over learningsDelivered in-flight reporting to internal teams in order to inform strategic decision making in marketing and programmingDesigned dissemination and engagement plan for evaluation outputs, ensuring policy influence, action research intentions and sector learning is delivered following publicationSituated evaluation and research outputs in wider context policy debates, maximising impact and learning across the public and third sectorRepresented the Games and the Cultural Programme to delivery partners, funders and public stakeholders such as DCMS and Birmingham City Council to ensure their investment, and interest, in our evaluation programme and publications Show less

Managing National Youth Trends: conducting UK wide research with Gen Z specialising in pop culture, digital space and social issues - using creativity as an accessible way to communicate data and tell stories. In Beatfreeks wider work: developing, implementing and training staff on research and evaluation methodologies - centring research participants understanding the value of data, making data collection more relevant to participants, and placing value on small data and lived experience.

Project Manager of National Youth Trends, a research project platforming the voices, needs and desires of young people across the UK to influence policy in the public, private and third sector. The more young people exercise their influence through creativity, the more relevant institutions become, and the more they can shape the world together.

As Project Researcher I gave research support to projects across Beatfreeks, developing internal research procedures, delivering focus groups and one to one interviews, writing surveys and analysing data. I also led on communication of data - writing reports and visualising data.

As Beatfreeks Office Coordinator I managed and implemented policies, procedures and systems across company from our GDPR policies to looking after the board of trustees. I took on a variety of responsibilities, filling in the gaps in a small team, from facilitating creative data collection to producin, and them empowering young people to own, a podcast.