Insight Paper: Beyond the bolt-on: Rethinking Systemic Change Evaluation Together

For those of us working on building thriving futures with and for children and young people, we find ourselves at a critical point where momentum around systemic change is growing across funding, policy and practice. This offers a real chance to tackle and mitigate the root drivers that hold the most complex issues facing children and young people in place. However, too often we conceive and commission evaluation of systemic change as a bolt-on activity for the purposes of accountability alone.

On the 20th of April 2026, we hosted our Systemic Change Impact Assembly, where we brought together young people, funders, commissioners, practitioners and systems thinkers to start a conversation around cross-sector collaboration on systemic change evaluation. In our new insight paper Beyond the bolt-on, we are sharing some of the initial thinking surfaced at that event around building the necessary infrastructure for the meaningful and equitable evaluation of systemic change.

This learning around the tensions and opportunities of evaluating systemic change will form the foundation of cross-sector collaboration on this work that we are initiating. We welcome your thoughts on this and your continued engagement in this work going forwards.

Read the paper here: https://www.dartington.org.uk/beyond-the-bolt-on