The Value of the Blueprint Festival

Blueprint was a three‐day festival which took place at Tate Liverpool in July 2014 and was organised and produced by Tate Collective Liverpool, as part of Circuit , a four‐year national programme connecting 15–25 year olds to the arts. Circuit aims to be open, reflective and critical and bring about organisational change. Members of Circuit' s young research and evaluation team, which is central to Circuit' s evaluation and research, have written this article, about our experiences of planning, delivering and evaluating Blueprint . The article articulates our own sense of the value and the challenges of the processes in which we engaged. The Blueprint festival was aimed at young people aged 15–25. Our roles as members of Tate Collective Liverpool involved planning, curating and delivering an exhibition, activities and events that took place as part of Blueprint . We also had crucial roles in evaluating the festival. Our roles as young evaluators have been key to our awareness of the learning that has taken place, for us, through the process of developing and delivering Blueprint . In this article we outline the processes and mechanisms through which learning took place, articulating the value of research and evaluation processes led by us, as young people, for our own professional development and for the development of gallery practice. The article also indicates something of the potential of such approaches for formal education.