Ripple Effect Mapping is a hugely useful and flexible evaluation tool for those working in communities and change-making, dealing with trying to make change on social issues where benefits aren’t always immediate, obvious or tangible. As part of our recent work with Bristol City Council on the evaluation of their Community Resilience Fund, People’s Voice Media led four Ripple Effect Mapping sessions with people representing community organisations that had received grant funding for capital projects. In this blog, Lauren Wallace-Thompson, our Communications and Community Engagement Manager, gives our top 5 reasons that we love to employ this tool to support partners, communities and clients with evaluation and learning.

Does it seem a little OTT to have a favourite evaluation tool? I’ve been a researcher for over 15 years now, and to be honest, the word “methodologies” still kind of brings me out in a cold sweat. At People’s Voice Media, we spend a lot of time bigging up the importance of “qualitative” data (that is, data other than pure numbers – which could be words, feelings, pictures, videos). We collect lots of stories from individuals via our Community Reporting method, and use these to create datasets of people’s experiences in their own words. Sometimes however, we want to “zoom out” slightly, and look at the bigger picture. Where we are trying to create change in a community, a system, an organisation or on a social issue, we need a way to capture all the various ways in which an intervention has an impact.

Enter, stage right, waving a flipchart marker pen: Ripple Effect Mapping. It’s a people-powered, flexible tool for discovering what has changed. It has lots of great features, and you can find out a bit more about how the process works on our previous blog. It involves getting people together in a room with a giant sheet of paper and some marker pens, and really thinking through all the changes that have happened. In the case of the Bristol City Council work, the “intervention” was funding for capital improvements awarded to 56 community organisations or projects. But it could be anything – the results of a campaign, a change in policy, a training programme, a social action, a charitable act.

Here are 6 things that we love about using Ripple Effect Mapping for evaluation:

1. It’s collaborative

Ripple Effect Mapping is always most powerful when undertaken in groups to make the most of the “hive mind”, and to gather perspectives from different parts of an organisation. You can bring in views and ideas from senior management, volunteers, beneficiaries, trustees, project coordinators, local residents and more. Different people will have experienced the changes in different ways, and observed things others haven’t. It really makes the most of collective knowledge.

2. It gives over power to the people who understand best

Ripple Effect Mapping hands over the identification of impact to the people with the real expertise. Can an external evaluator judge exactly what changes have occurred? Can they notice subtle and unintended consequences (especially that go beyond those stated on the initial project brief, for example)? Well, maybe. But probably not as much as someone who has been embedded in the organisation, or lives in the community, and has witnessed the change first-hand.

3. It’s flexible

Sometimes evaluation markers can be set from the outset of a project – and they remain fixed. Which means that other things that change might be overlooked.

Ripple Effect Mapping starts with a blank sheet of paper, which means there’s no parameters on what can be recorded and tracked.

For this reason, we always say that it’s good for tracking:

• both postive and negative outcomes
• expected and unexpected consequences
• intentional and unintended results
• direct impacts, and others that are more tangential
• changes that have already occurred, and things that are now in progress for the future

4. It’s genuinely joyful

Of all the different sessions I deliver when facilitating with People’s Voice Media, it’s Ripple Effect Mapping sessions that I look forward to the most. For lots of organisations or community groups, it’s the first time they’ve ever stepped back and put down all their achievements and successes down on paper, and they are often both surprised and proud (rightly so!) at the impact of their work. We do always make sure as facilitators that the group spends some time considering any downsides, challenges or misfires that have occurred, but overwhelmingly these sessions are full of positivity and celebration.

5. It tells a story

A key part of our Ripple Effect Mapping sessions is where we ask participants to talk us through their maps. This really gives people the chance to process all that they’ve discovered into a narrative that shows a journey of change, improvement and learning. This in itself can be a really powerful moment for a community or organisation, where they recognise their own capacity to create change. And you know how fond of a story we are here at People’s Voice Media!

6. It can be longitudinal

Or perhaps we should make that, it should be longitudinal. With many projects, interventions or changes, it can take a long time to see the full picture of the real world impacts that are created. The old “Rome wasn’t built in a day” cliche holds especially true when you’re dealing with complex social issues or within rigid systems where change can be slow.

Ripple Effect Mapping is really useful for tracking change over time, and supporting continuous learning and improvement. We often recommend that groups repeat the Ripple Effect Mapping process at intervals both during and after a project (say every six or 12 months), or after key milestones are achieved. A snapshot immediately after a project finishes might not give enough time for the impact “ripples” to have worked through and spread out, so try doing a Ripple Effect Map again 6 months down the line, and compare the two to get a fuller picture of those longer-term impacts and changes.

“This approach to evaluation was an exciting venture for us. It has allowed us to be creative and highlight the real life impacts of our work – we often get stuck behind figures, so it’s been fantastic to bring the fund’s impacts to life. We’re already, as a team, using the REM tool in other areas of work, so this project has given us all some professional skills!” – Bristol City Council Community Development Team

And one thing we don’t love so much…

It’s messy. Oh, it’s messy. Getting the sprawling thoughts of a group of people down on paper in a limited amount of time can mean that some of those maps look like a toddler has been let loose with the felt tips. That’s okay, though – it’s all part of the process and we’re here to help hold you in the chaos. That’s why it is really helpful to have someone external to come in and facilitate the process, adding in some structure and ensuring there is time for interpretation and explanation, and then working to extract and analyse the data from the maps into useful learning and action.

If you would like People’s Voice Media to design and facilitate a Ripple Effect Mapping process to support your organisation with its learning and evaluation, please get in touch. Just email enquiries@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk or leave us a comment below!

Earlier this year, we teamed up with community members in Wigan to share information and skills around Ripple Effect Mapping.

Across a series of 4 sessions, people learnt about the Ripple Effect Mapping process, creating their own maps, learning how to facilitate this approach to impact measurement within their own communities, and developing skills in packaging the findings in the form of written reports and presentations.

The learning from the sessions culminated in a community sharing event, during which the group showcased their Ripple Effect Maps and shared the learning from the workshops.

The group have continued with their work around Ripple Effect Mapping and intend on using this methodology well into the future supporting the development of a range of different community initiatives.

Keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming Community Reporting Project in Wigan!

Members of the Camerados movement have been busy mapping out the ripples of impact their public living rooms have had on local communities.

Over the past 2 years, people have come together online to learn about Ripple Effect Mapping and share the waves of impact that have been brought about by public living rooms from Boston USA to Lochgilphead Scotland.

Public living rooms are a concept created by the Camerados movement to encourage the creation of agenda free community spaces.

Public living rooms have sofas and cuppas, maybe some tunes, maybe some board games. They are warm welcoming places with people who listen, who treat everyone the same, who don’t judge or try to fix each other.

Each public living room is different. They are not manned by staff, they are set up and organised by camerados for their communities and are open to all. And all of them use the six simple camerado ideas to underpin how they run.

Some are pop ups for short periods, some are at regular times each week and others are open daily, and you’ll find them all over the place. They’re in Sierra Leone, in the USA, in New Zealand, and all over the UK; in shopping centres, town halls, old shops, hospitals, cafes. And one day we want there to be one in every neighbourhood.

You can find out more about these over on their website and see if there’s one in your area!

Each session introduced Camerados to the concept of Ripple Effect Mapping – a visual way of marking down levels of impact in relation to community projects using simple craft materials and group discussion. The unique approach to impact measurement allows people to identify actions and changes that have occurred, capturing the often unnoticed ripples of impact that might not necessarily be noticed using more traditional approaches. Take a look at an example map above to see what kind of content is created during the REM process.

The coloured stickers you see on the paper, along with the different styles of lines all mark different aspects of change that have occurred as a result of the creation of a Public Living Room.

As part of the project we’ve spoken to over 30 Public Living Rooms from across the UK (even stretching as far the Boston in the USA!) and have heard how they have positively impacted the people who have accessed them. Whether they are providing a warm space to gather during colder months, to fostering connections between people who otherwise wouldn’t meet, the process has uncovered that even something as simple as a brew can lead to huge ripples of impact on an individual, community and societal level.

To find out more about the project and Ripple Effect Mapping methodology head over to our earlier blog post here or reach out to us on enquiries@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk

Over the past 6 months, People’s Voice Media have been delivering a series of Ripple Effect Mapping Workshops and Storytelling Sessions with members of the Camerados Public Living Room movement.

Camerados is a social movement – which really just means that there are lots and lots of people (from Baltimore to Blackpool) who think being a bit more human is a good idea. The movement started in 2015 and the main thing you’ll see them doing is opening Public Living Rooms in different communities across the world.

What is a Public Living Room?

A public living room is an agenda free space for communities of people to come together, sit down with a cuppa, have a chat, and feel more human. It’s as simple as that!

So far there have been handful of online ripple effect mapping workshops and storytelling sessions. In these spaces representatives from different public living rooms have come together to reflect on what impact they’ve had in their local communities. Not only have they shared stories, but they’ve been busy producing Ripple Effect Maps.

What is Ripple Effect Mapping?

Ripple Effect Mapping is a technique that can be used by community organisations to measure and record the different levels of change that have happened as a result of their existence. Rather than focusing on numbers and statistics, REM helps to unpick and document the more qualitative ripples of impact that often occur in smaller scale community initiatives, but can be harder to monitor using quantitative means.

As part of the REM process, people mapped out the different forms of impact their public living rooms had led to. From boosting confidence in those who attended, to connecting people with wider community initiatives, there were endless ripples of impact. After noting these ideas down, people then began to categorize the impact based on individual, community and societal level change (hence the colourful dots you’ll see on the example maps above!) – this process helps people to visualize changes that otherwise would’ve been difficult to document. After the mapping process was complete each person reflected on their map by sharing their thoughts in the form of a story. By the end of the session we’d gained a deeper understanding of the intricacys of the PLRs and what impact they’d had on the communities they existed in.

Take a look at the photos above to get an idea of what a ripple effect map looks like!

From Rochdale, Greater Manchester to Boston, Massachussets, people have shared their experiences with setting up and running these spaces. We hope to share these experiences and findings more widely within the Camerados movement in the hopes of inspiring more public living rooms.

Keep your eyes peeled for updates on the finding of of this project!

You can find out more about the Camerados movement by visiting their website here.