What We Do
Strata Insight provides research-led consultancy support for heritage, cultural, and community organisations working with wellbeing and social impact. We support organisations to shape, deliver, and understand projects that aim to create meaningful change, and to evidence that change in ways that are credible, ethical, and proportionate to real-world delivery.
Many heritage and community projects operate under significant constraints, including limited time, funding, evaluation capacity, and pressure to demonstrate impact. Our role is not to impose inappropriate academic or clinical models, but to support clear thinking, defensible evidence, and honest interpretation across the full project lifecycle.
Our services are flexible and can be engaged individually or in combination, depending on need.
Our approach
We support organisations to design, deliver, and understand heritage and community projects that aim to support wellbeing.
We support organisations to think about learning and evidence from the outset of project design, rather than treating evaluation as a retrospective or add-on activity. Our work focuses on helping organisations understand what change a project is aiming to create, why that change matters, and how it might be understood or evidenced in practice.
This begins with clarifying project aims, identifying realistic forms of change, and agreeing how wellbeing is being understood within the context of delivery. By doing this early, learning and evidence-gathering can be embedded into project plans in ways that support delivery, rather than disrupt it.
Our approach is guided by a principle of proportionate rigour. This means using methods that are strong enough to support honest and defensible claims, without imposing unnecessary burden, risk, or complexity. Approaches are selected to suit the scale, purpose, and context of each project, rather than applying academic or clinical standards where they are inappropriate.
Rather than relying on one-size-fits-all metrics, we focus on conceptual alignment between project aims, wellbeing definitions, activities, and methods. This helps organisations avoid over-claiming and ensures that any conclusions drawn are proportionate to the data collected.
The services below show how this approach is applied in practice, across project design and development, delivery support, evaluation, and learning, with outputs designed to support both accountability and future project development, and with clear guidance on what the evidence can, and cannot, demonstrate.
Project design and development
We support organisations at the earliest stages of project development, helping to translate wellbeing ambitions into deliverable, ethical, and fundable projects.
This includes support with:
- clarifying aims and intended outcomes
- defining how wellbeing is being understood in practice
- aligning activities with realistic forms of change
- embedding learning and evidence-gathering into project plans
- supporting funding applications and business cases
The focus is on designing projects that can genuinely support wellbeing in practice, not just in principle.
Project delivery support and critical friendship
Where helpful, we work alongside organisations during live projects, providing reflective and analytical support as delivery unfolds.
This may include:
- acting as a critical friend to delivery teams
- supporting reflective practice and sense-making
- helping teams adapt to emerging challenges or opportunities
- bridging delivery, safeguarding, and learning
This form of support recognises that wellbeing is shaped through day-to-day delivery decisions, not only through outcomes measured at the end of a project.
Evaluation, evidence, and learning
We design and deliver evaluation approaches that support learning and accountability without over-burdening projects or overstating impact.
Our evaluation work focuses on:
- alignment between project aims, wellbeing concepts, and methods
- proportionate data collection matched to scale, risk, and purpose
- ethical practice and participant experience
- careful interpretation of what the evidence can, and cannot show
Across all evaluation work, we apply proportionate rigour: doing what is necessary and defensible for the context, and no more than that.
Frameworks, tools, and guidance
We develop practical frameworks and tools to help organisations think clearly about wellbeing, change, and evidence.
This may include:
- theory of change or logic models
- wellbeing frameworks tailored to heritage contexts
- evaluation planning tools
- reflective practice resources
- guidance on responsible impact reporting
These outputs are designed to be usable, adaptable, and appropriate for non-clinical, community-based settings.
Training and capacity building
We offer training and support to build organisational confidence in working with wellbeing and evidence.
This includes:
- selecting and using wellbeing measures appropriately
- understanding strengths and limitations of different data types
- embedding reflective practice into delivery
- communicating impact responsibly
Training is designed to support practical decision-making, not to turn practitioners into researchers.
How services can be combined
Organisations may engage with Strata Insight for a single piece of work such as evaluation or framework development, or for support across multiple stages of a project.
Common combinations include:
- project design support followed by delivery-phase reflection and evaluation
- delivery support paired with proportionate evaluation
- evaluation findings feeding directly into future project design
Our role is to support thoughtful practice, honest evidence, and meaningful learning, whatever stage a project is at.