Guide to Evaluation for Arts Therapists and Arts & Health Practitioners

Giorgos Tsiris trained as a music therapist at Nordoff Robbins (London, UK), where he is now conducting his doctoral research. He is a research assistant at Nordoff Robbins where he coordinates the monitoring and evaluation portfolio. He works as a music therapist with terminally ill adults and bereaved families at St Christopher's Hospice. He is the founding editor of the open access journal, Approaches: Music Therapy & Special Music Education, and coordinator of the Research Network of the British Association for Music Therapy. Mercédès Pavlicevic trained as a music therapist at Nordoff Robbins (London, UK), and completed her doctoral studies at the University of Edinburgh's Department of Psychology with Colwyn Trevarthen. As a music therapist she worked in a range of institutional and community settings, in Scotland, in the Lebanon and in South Africa. Mercédès was Director of the Master's in Music Therapy programme at the University of Pretoria until 2006 - this was the first accredited training programme on the African Continent. She authored, co-authored and edited numerous music therapy publications. She was Research Director at Nordoff Robbins, and Research Associate at SOAS Music Department, at the University of London. Camilla Farrant trained as a music therapist at Nordoff Robbins (London, UK) after reading Music at Christ's College, Cambridge University and studying the cello and piano at the Royal Academy of Music. She is the founder of and music therapist for The Music Therapy Tree, an organisation that provides music therapy to vulnerable children in mainstream education. She works as a research assistant at Nordoff Robbins, and performs professionally with The Massive Violins.

• Foreword by Mike White. Introduction. Evaluation Basics. Phase 1. Planning. Phase 2. Developing Data Collection Tools. Phase 3. Collecting Data and Supplementary Material. Phase 4. Processing Data and Supplementary Material. Phase 5. Drafting Outputs. Phase 6. Finalising and Disseminating Outputs. Interlude: A Note on Ethics. Conclusion. References. Index.

By clearly focusing on value in context and reflexivity in practice to determine its meaning, we are offered appropriate evaluation tools that work from the inside out. It sensibly distinguishes between evaluation and research, and by being context-specific rather than practice-specific in assessing the utility of its methodologies, it offers entry points for practitioners from a wide range of backgrounds.