Evaluation of the Libraries: Opportunities for Everyone innovation fund
Evaluation of the Libraries: Opportunities for Everyone innovation fund
Documents
Details
The Taskforce was active between 2015 to 2020.
The Libraries: Opportunities for Everyone innovation fund (LOFE) was launched in December 2016 alongside the Libraries Deliver: Ambition for Public Libraries in England 2016-21 strategy document. The fund’s primary aim was to enable library services to trial innovative projects that would benefit disadvantaged people and places in England. Managed by the Arts Council, the £3.9 million fund awarded grants of between £50,000 and £250,000 to 30 projects across 46 library services.
To ensure that the benefits of the £3.9 million LOFE fund are fully realised, DCMS and the Taskforce commissioned Traverse to support the evaluation process and produce a programme-wide evaluation report. The aims of the evaluation were to:
- provide an overview of activities undertaken by individual projects, highlighting major themes
- provide an understanding of the difference that these activities made to participants, libraries and local communities (project impacts)
- draw out the main learning from the approaches taken by projects, including which activities were felt to be successful and why, as well as what challenges were encountered and how these were overcome
The evaluation report is supplemented by:
- a Project Information Booklet which provides further information about the aims, activities and impacts of each funded project, as well as contact details
- infographics which provide an overview of the LOFE fund and illustrate some of the impact of the projects