Date/Time
Date(s) - 11/02/2026
0:00
Categories
Where Nothing Is Clear and Everything Keeps Changing
What it means for evaluation to recognise complexity
Facilitated by Dr Cathy Sharp
- Date: Wednesday, 11 February 2026
- Time (CET): 14:00–17:00
- Duration: 3 hours
- Price: €85 for EES Members, **€110 for Non-Members
- Special rate for groups – contact secretariat@europeanevaluation.org
Workshop Description
The purpose of this session is to generate a dialogue about values and principles to encourage a more relational, appreciative and systemic approach to learning and evaluation. We will use a series of provocations as navigation aids to discover, explore, and co-create our mutual assumptions and expectations. The provocations are rooted in a review of literature about key ideas of collaboration, leadership, participatory practice and action research. Whilst not essential, workshop participants may like to read the report in advance or scan the visual presentation of the full set of 24 provocations. There is also a short follow up session to explore practice on 18 March 2026.
Learning Objectives
Participants will have a chance to
- Be part of a dialogue about how to generate a more relational approach to learning and evaluation.
- Have experience of working with a set of navigation aids and a chance to think about their wider use.
- Consider their own agency and role in creating new cultures of learning and evaluation
- Connect with peers and find allies in change.
Target Audience
Evaluators and others interested in how to support systemic practice, including commissioners and policy makers with an appetite to bridge the gap between the rhetoric about a desire to work differently and current practices. Some knowledge of evaluation ideal, but not essential.
Facilitator Bio
Dr Cathy Sharp, Research for Real, Edinburgh, UK
Dr Cathy Sharp is the founder of Research for Real in Edinburgh and Honorary Professor in the School of Health at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. With interests in appreciative and systemic action research, she is recognised in the UK and internationally for work that challenges thinking and practice about leadership, participation, learning and evaluation. Cathy has been an evaluator and learning partner on a wide range of public programmes and services, allied to the UK policy ambitions for public service reform. Most recently this includes Collective Leadership for The Scottish Government and for the Scottish Directors of Public Health, and other programmes that support health and social care. For six years she led the learning partner team for What Matters to You, a place-based system change initiative funded by BBC Children in Need and the Hunter Foundation. In 2021, Cathy won The Dione Hills Tavistock Institute and UK Evaluation Society Prize for the best short paper on the application of complexity-informed thinking in the field of evaluation: “Be a participant, not a spectator – new territories for evaluation” was published in The Evaluator, Spring 2022. More information is available here: www.research-for-real.co.uk and at Grow As We Go: https://substack.com/@researchforreal
Participants can expect to find both resonance and resistance, worth exploring further in their own settings., Cathay Sharp
SECTION B – Agenda / Structure
| Time (CEST) |
Session |
| 2pm | WELCOME AND INTRODUCTIONS |
| 2.10pm | SHORT INTRODUCTION TO THE REPORT / PROVOCATIONS |
| 2.25pm | CHECK IN |
| 2.35pm | PICK AND MIX |
| 2.40pm | BREAKOUT ROOMS 1 |
| 3.10pm | BREAK |
| 3.20pm | FEEDBACK PLENARY AND RESPONSE |
| 4pm | BREAKOUT ROOMS 2 |
| 4.30pm | UNFOLDING STORY OF THE FUTURE |
| 4.45pm | CLOSING REMARKS AND NEXT STEPS |
| 5pm | CLOSE |
€85 for EES Members
**€110 for Non-Members
Special rate for groups (5+ persons)
Special Note: If the Euro exchange rate makes registration difficult, please let us know—we’re happy to discuss reduced fees.
Registration details to follow shortly, in the meantime please do save the date.