Dabbledoo and NPC: Using data to illustrate the impact of arts education

Home » Blog » Dabbledoo and NPC: Using data to illustrate the impact of arts education

For too long, arts education has been seen as an extra, a “nice to have.” This view misses the huge impact music, art, and drama have on building essential life skills.

Our goal is to transform arts education in primary schools across Ireland, making these subjects fun and accessible for both students and teachers. Our platform provides interactive resources that help educators bring the joy of the arts into their classrooms.

Dabbledoo supports over 12,000 teachers in more than 1,400 schools—almost half of all primary schools nationwide. This shows we’re meeting a real need in the Irish education system.

But we wanted to do more.

And we knew we needed a way to prove our long-term impact on students and continually improve what we do. This led us to partner with New Philanthropy Capital (NPC), a collaboration that gave us the tools and framework to become a truly data-driven organisation.

Building a blueprint for impact

NPC is an established consultancy known for helping social organisations maximise their impact. Our partnership with them gave us the structure we needed to measure our social change.

A key part of this was creating a Theory of Change (ToC). This framework clearly outlines how our weekly arts lessons lead to long-term outcomes such as creativity, empathy, and teamwork.

The creation of the ToC was a full–team process with NPC hosting group workshops to help us focus on the key benefits of arts education and how we can measure these through our yearly survey and weekly lesson scores.

By explicitly linking our activities to outcomes such as “enhanced creativity, increased self-confidence, empathy, and improved teamwork,” we can now systematically test and prove our core ideas. This evidence-based approach helps us show the tangible benefits of our program, making a strong case for why arts education is an essential part of the education system, not just an add-on.

To accompany the ToC, NPC helped us build a custom impact dashboard in Excel to replicate the ToC diagram and operationalise it with live visual data.

We also mapped it onto a platform called Mixpanel so that it would integrate with existing data. The migration from Excel to Mixpanel was relatively simple thanks to the clear framework developed by NPC and the expertise of the dabbledoo team.

Turning spreadsheets into smart dashboards

Our shift in data management was a huge step forward. We moved from manual processes to a dynamic, real-time impact dashboard.

Our new system automatically gathers crucial feedback, such as teacher surveys and weekly lesson satisfaction scores. This saves on manual work and keeps our data up to date. The dashboard is powerful because it combines qualitative and quantitative feedback to give a complete picture of how well our music, art and drama programs are working.

The creation of personalised dashboards also makes it easy for teams to work together.

As Sofia, our Lead Media Producer, said, “The production dashboard lets me see the impact of our in-house production in terms of specific pieces of content and overall trends.”

Different teams—from content creators to teacher support—can get custom dashboards with data that’s relevant to them. This helps everyone understand and use data effectively, turning insights into action.

Categories:

Impact measurement, evaluation and data

The real magic of our impact dashboard is how it creates a continuous feedback loop so that data isn't just for reporting but a tool for constant improvement.

Taking ownership of impact

For impact measurement to really work, it has to be a team effort.

At dabbledoo, our dedicated “Impact Team” leads this charge. The team includes key leaders including myself, our Head of Drama and our Chief Technical Officer who turn raw numbers into actionable insights, making sure our findings are part of our strategic planning.

Ultimately, the success of this model depends on the team buying in. When every person understands how their daily work contributes to our overall impact, it creates a powerful culture of shared responsibility and continuous improvement.

Using data to improve outcomes

The real magic of our impact dashboard is how it creates a continuous feedback loop so that data isn’t just for reporting but a tool for constant improvement.

For example, if the dashboard shows that student engagement consistently drops in a specific lesson before the half-term break, we can analyse and compare the scores and comments and use that data to update and rework the lesson.

In a year’s time, the dashboard would hopefully show a lift in satisfaction scores, proving that this data-informed change worked.

This continuous cycle of measuring, analysing, and adapting ensures our lessons stay effective. It turns dabbledoo into a dynamic, learning organization where teachers and children help shape our content and products.

Scaling our impact

Looking ahead, dabbledoo has big plans to increase our impact, and our data-driven approach will guide us in creating better resources for both teachers and children.

The feedback and data we now collect is evidence of the great impact of arts education. We’re in a unique position to use this validated data—showing real improvements in creativity, confidence, and problem-solving—to advocate for the important role of arts education at a national policy level and create lasting change in how the arts are valued and supported in our national education system.