Dada-South • Quality Framework

What does quality mean to Dada-South?

Dada-South has been developing a kind of code of practice - a framework that would outline what the organisation means by 'quality'. How do we know we've done something great if we don't know what 'great' is? And how can we inspire other people to grow in confidence about Disability and Deaf Arts and working with disabled and Deaf artists if we can't tell them what good work looks like? So, over the past few months we've embarked on a journey to find out what we, as an organisation, mean when we say something's great.

The framework is a tool for Dada-South to undertake robust self-evaluation firstly. But, as it has been developing we realised that it could also be used as a framework for Disability and Deaf Arts as a sector. The framework is being devised by Dada-South Trustees, staff and the disabled and Deaf artists with whom we work. It also comes at a time when we have to very clearly demonstrate good quality work and be able to communicate this with our funders, such as Arts Council England.

Mandy Legg, Chair of Dada-South, is facilitating the process and to date, this has involved board participation sessions, a staff participation workshop and a stakeholder workshop for people that work closely with Dada-South. Artists, partners and funders have had the opportunity to feed into the process so far, but there's more to do to ensure that we achieve a wide ownership of the framework. 

So what do we want to achieve? Well, we want to be able to guarantee the quality of our work at Dada-South and be able to state the criteria by which we wish to be judged and assessed. Some of these criteria will be similar to other organisations working in the arts, some may be specific to the Disability and Deaf Arts sector and some will be wholly specific to Dada-South.

Having a framework of this kind in place will enable us to be confident in what we do and everyone who engages with Dada-South will be clear about what we do, why we do it and how we do it too.

We will be working with more artists, partners, funders and other stakeholders as we develop this framework. We will also engage disabled and Deaf artists to help us present the framework in accessible and creative ways so that it doesn't become a dry document that sits in a drawer, but that it becomes part of our culture and also inspires others. 

So far we have reached agreement on the high level definitions of quality in and around our work. This means that we have come up with a list of areas that we would like to look at and explore what is meant by 'quality' within each one.

 

We have an outline for the framework and now need to build the detail within it.

 

If you would like to know more about our quality framework and would like to be involved in some way, please contact Dada-South. In the meantime we will continue to share our processes on this site so do come back for updates.

 

See more images of the Quality Framework process in our Galleries.