Arts-based approaches to evaluating impact: a case study of youth perspectives towards Smart Local Energy Systems

The need for citizen voice in policy feedback operations is increasingly recognised amongst policymakers. As the climate crisis becomes more urgent, young people are often excluded from conversations about energy policy that will affect their future ways of living. This article presents an example of an innovative methodological approach to evaluating young peoples’ involvement in policymaking feedback processes based on the discoveries made during a performance-based practice research case study. Referring to previous working models, reflections are offered about how Evaluative Performance can be used in valuing young peoples’ responses to new innovations in Smart Local Energy Systems (SLES). This article makes three key claims: Evaluative Performance as a method and approach can provide insight into how a group of young people, whilst acting as consultants, might respond to energy policy innovations such as SLES; understandings of the wider affordances of arts-based approaches within an experimental evaluative context mean they have potential applications beyond the cultural sector; and Evaluative Performance can facilitate understandings of how staging and directorial choices impact theatre audiences’ experience of the ‘real’ and (re)presented words of research participants.