Reframing evaluation and “frameworks”: Reflecting, learning and adapting practices of social change

Evaluation is a double-edged sword. For those invested in social change, it is vital to evaluate the process and impact of designing. However, traditional positivist approaches can risk harm by magnifying power through the instruments and mechanisms of evaluation, especially when Global North models are unthinkingly applied in the Global South. What is deemed valuable to know – without asking what matters to whom, how, where and when – is an ethical and political concern as it ignores how people are variously situated. This paper argues for building evaluative capacities otherwise. It shares key insights by tracing how an evaluative “framework” was initially codesigned, then iterated and adapted through a transcultural mentoring program for and with women in Australasia. We refrain from emphasising the “framework” but show how it changed as we changed. In so doing, we show ways to foster ongoing adaptation and reflexivity, to catalyse collective evaluative practices as participatory codesign.