Date: Sunday, May 4, 2025
Hello! My name is Jenna LaChenaye, and I am Associate Professor of Educational Psychology and Research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where I teach graduate qualitative research methods and have the pleasure of working with language and environmental education programs across coastal Louisiana.
Despite years of forays into various social sciences, I find myself returning to my initial degree in visual arts (the word “impractical” still rings in my ears from my high school counselor as I shirked her other options) as we walk carefully on the unsteady ground of the current evaluation environment.
Most notably, I see the instructor wandering around the Drawing III classroom, all of us nervously sketching in our oversized tablets, with charcoal streaks across our faces as the model sighs in boredom. After silently hovering behind me, I see him reach out his arm and drags his full sleeve down, smearing my work into oblivion. He mutters, “You’re at 70%. Do it again.” So we do.
While I remember the frustration and anxiety of those studio classes, I more readily remember the lessons that have had huge impacts on my work and approach to evaluation, especially in these uncertain times:
Visual Arts is about Embracing Ambiguity…and so is Evaluation. Learning to embrace ambiguity – finding oneself or one’s work in a place of multiple possible interpretations and opportunities – is the foundation of subjective creative works. Knowing that the feared sleeve could wipe away your work at any time taught us to think about our decisions and the other possible approaches unknowingly omitted from consideration. What other ways can I tackle this? Whose perspectives am I leaving out, or more importantly, whose preferences should I not entertain to best meet the needs of the community? What other opportunities can emerge from this? What other ways can I address the issue?
Some People Will Always Despise Jackson Pollock. Art is about telling a story or sharing a feeling rather than pleasing the masses. As I find myself with an inbox of emails about how to make things “pleasing” in these odd times, I find myself altering my communication to satisfy those threatening the funding of the communities I love. While I do intend to carefully construct our work given the power hierarchy inherent in work with such disparities between government goals and community needs, I do also want to never fail to center my participants’ stories and experiences. If someone doesn’t like Pollock because “their four-year-old can do that”, there’s likely no art lecture that will suddenly change their minds. Keep doing the work that matters, adjusting where you need to stay afloat but always cautious of your authenticity.
Art and Evaluation are Advocacy. From Picasso’s Guernica or Rockwell’s Southern Justice, art is disruptive. I would be remiss to not acknowledge the privilege that is required to do advocacy in the current environment, as funding becomes more tethered to politics. In whatever ways you can, continue to consider how your work speaks truth to power and shines a light for those who are often left in the dark. Consider ways that the process of evaluation – data collection, planning, etc. – can be empowering activities in themselves. I have found some solace in providing free evaluation and grant writing workshops for nonprofits in my area as a way of doing something that allows me to work in the spaces and values I love without the concerns that creep up when it comes to official activities that are currently scrutinized in my state. Evaluation impact is far more than just the report.
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