Section 1

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Why are the GSOs important?

The Generic Social Outcomes (GSOs) set out the (indicative) ways in which museums, libraries and archives impact on social and community life.

The national GSO framework has developed because:
* Museums, libraries and archives need to be able to give evidence of the benefit of our services to HM Treasury and other interested stakeholders. This framework sets out one way of aligning the sector's potential social contribution with key government policy drivers.
* Practice based research has looked at many case studies of front-line delivery into communities, and the impacts of real work have informed the GSO indicators.

The GSO framework has three broad thematic areas, referred to as the first tier outcomes in most documents. The first tier GSO outcomes are:
- Stronger and Safer Communities
- Strengthening Public Life
- Health and Well-being.

The first stage of using and understanding the GSOs is having a clear idea of why your service is important to the communities you serve, and how your service reflects their needs and impacts and benefits their lives. If you have not started this kind of conversation in your setting, you will do this as you go through the exercises in this document / website.

All social impacts will fall into one or more of these areas. To help sector practitioners identify where their outcomes might be placed, these outcomes are divided into a series of second tier GSO outcomes, which give more detail about specific outcomes involved.

Look at the diagram (see 8 - Additional Resources) to see what second tier outcomes fit with each of the three first tier GSO outcomes.

 

First Tier Indicators         Second Tier Indicators
Stronger and Safer Communities
  • Improving group and inter-group dialogue and understanding
  • Supporting cultural diversity and identity
  • Encouraging familial ties and relationships
  • Tackling the fear of crime and anti-social behaviour
  • Contributing to crime prevention and reduction
Health and Well-being
  • Encouraging healthy lifestyles and contributing to mental and physical well-being
  • Supporting care and recovery
  • Supporting older people to live independent lives
  • Helping children and young people to enjoy life and make a positive contribution
Strengthening Public Life
  • Encouraging and supporting awareness and participation in local-decision making and wider civic and political engagement
  • Building the capacity of community and voluntary groups
  • Providing safe, inclusive and trusted public spaces
  • Enabling community empowerment through the awareness of rights, benefits and external services
  • Improving the responsiveness of services to the needs of the local community, including other stakeholders

 

The North East Regional Museums Hub and the London Cultural Improvement Programme have both developed practical tools to support practitioners to use the GSOs in their planning and evaluation. This resource draws those tools together and will deepen your understanding and confidence in using the GSOs.

Throughout this document we refer to the "North East Regional Museums Hub Tool". This tool is a suite of documents that takes each Generic Social Outcome and breaks down the second tier indicators into example third tier indicators. For example, for, in Stronger Safer Communities (first tier), encouraging familial ties and relationships (second tier), the North East Regional Museums Hub tool gives a number of practical, third tier examples, including:

  

 Stronger and Safer Communities  Encouraging familial ties and relationship
  • Family groups say they have learnt more about their families.
  • Families say they took part and enjoyed spending quality, "fun" time together.
  • Parents / carers said they understood more about how their children learn.
  • Parents / carers have increased confidence in themselves as learners and as role models for their children.
  • Children and parents / carers feel their needs were taken into account when resources, projects, exhibitions were developed.
  • Families say they have improved communication and relationships with the family following activity at the museum, library or archive.
  • Families keep in touch or do more things together as a result of the experience.
  • Families say that they learnt together and from each other.
  • Children and young people feel more confident about their learning.

The North East Regional Museums Hub tool also shows how the third tier indicators map to Generic Learning Outcomes.

Have a look at the North East Regional Museums Hub tool, 8 - Additional Resources.

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