The measurement should not feel like surveillance, and it should not feel like compliance. It should feel like reflection, storytelling, and memory. It is where good work learns how to explain itself.
This is the path from a person taking part to a funder releasing money on proof. We are somewhere along it, not at the end of it, and the honest thing is to show you exactly where.
Attendance, unique participants, duration, dosage, retention, and a movement-derived group-synchrony index — produced as a byproduct of people taking part, with consent, rather than as a second job bolted on at the end. The capture works today. The one-button report that turns it into a funder-ready export does not exist yet.
Something that observes and documents what actually happened: session records, summaries, and — the part that matters — flagging where the evidence is missing rather than quietly rounding it up. A program's second memory. This is under construction now.
A funder locks a commitment against a specific outcome. Baseline, then the work, then the measurement, then release. The proof comes before the money, not after — no twelve-month reporting contortion, no glossy annual report standing in for evidence. This is architecture and intent. It does not run.
The workspace that would sit between the program and the evidence — plan, run, measure, learn, report, and export a Replication Pack the organization keeps. It is a planned product and the least-built thing we name anywhere. We describe it as designed. It is not a running system.
During the founding period, verification is mutual attestation with structural cross-checks — not independent verification. The thing that measures and the people who approve the method are close to each other, and both have an interest in the work succeeding. Pretending otherwise would be the easiest lie available to us and the most damaging one.
Independence gets supplied structurally first — funders countersigning releases, and disagreements published alongside the attestations — and an independent evaluator layers in later. Until then, the claim is attested, with structural cross-checks. Never independently verified.
We did not invent a proprietary wellbeing score. These are the instruments the field already trusts, they are free to use, and a grant officer will recognize every one of them.
Mental wellbeing. Free for non-commercial use; registration with Warwick required.
Loneliness and social connection. The measure the US Surgeon General's advisory made fundable language.
Closeness to the group. Works for children, older adults, and low-literacy settings — no translation needed.
Group belonging and morale. Free with citation.
A measurement kit is only as good as its discipline about overreach. So the limits are written down before the data is collected, not after.
Attendance, unique participants, duration, dosage, retention. These are outputs and engagement, claimable as fact, and they map directly onto the fields a public arts funder asks for.
Movement activity level is not wellbeing. It is participation intensity. It will not be dressed up as a health outcome, because it is not one.
Group synchrony is an engagement and connection indicator computed from movement data. Interpersonal synchrony is an evidence-supported correlate of social bonding — so we validate our index against self-reported connection rather than claiming it as a standalone health outcome.
If you run programs and you are tired of proving your value with a story and a photograph, this is the conversation we want to have.