Chicago Opera Theater

Who is Chicago Opera Theater? Chicago Opera Theater blends main stage performances, outreach, education and young audiences programs to reach an audience of hundreds of thousands. It develops young talent while bringing top-tier performers, conductors, directors and designers to its productions. The Opera for All program brings the opera to dozens of elementary classrooms around Chicago.

Question

Chicago Opera Theater (COT) sought help clarifying goals and outcomes. Knowing that both private and public agencies increasingly select organizations to fund based on demonstrated results, COT contracted with the Improve Group for support in bringing together artists, teachers, principals and students in developing measurable outcomes. In particular, COT staff hoped that creativity and evidence could be complementary aspects of their evaluation

Process

With a lot of ideas and creative energy, but a limited budget, COT turned to the Improve Group for evaluation coaching. The Improve Group provided ideas and examples from its evaluation projects with Performing Arts Workshop and Perpich Center for Arts Education, established milestones for each month during the 2007-08 school year, and helped draft surveys. When results came in, we worked with staff to interpret the data and identify key findings.

Outcome

Through the coaching by the Improve Group, Chicago Opera Theater has developed six key program goals and begun collecting data to measure outcomes. Teachers have been very supportive of the effort, and COT has had nearly 100% response rate on its initial survey. While some artists were initially nervous that the results would be used for performance measurement rather than program evaluation, they have begun reviewing data and are becoming more excited about their role in using data to help the program develop.