Capturing the impact of co-creation: Poetry and street art in iztapalapa

This chapter seeks to test through a case study how transformative change resulting from Co-Creation can be evidenced and measured using a quasi experimental mixed-method approach. The first section focuses on the design of the case study, a poetry workshop aimed at students aged 14–17, initiated at a secondary school in Iztapalapa, Mexico City, by a group of researchers in collaboration with four poets, a street artist, a governmental organization belonging to the Mexican Ministry of Culture, the teachers and non-academic staff from a lower secondary school. The second section explains the design of the research methods and analyses changes in how workshop participants perceive their neighbourhood and themselves as agents of change in their school and wider community. The final section assesses the effectiveness of the both the Co-Creation workshop and the methodology used to measure its impact. Our final comments suggest that to be more efficient, the evaluation of Co-Creation workshops need to focus on both the intangible (knowledge, understanding, emotions) and the creative (poetry, painting) outcomes in ways that combine research methods from the North with strategies inspired by the epistemologies of the South.