By Laura Barraclough
What is the Arts Award?
Arts award covers a range of Arts based qualifications offered to all young people aged 25 and under. The Award is led and managed by Trinity College London alongside the Arts Council England. The Arts Award gives children the opportunity to further explore the arts world, develop leadership skills, problem-solve, reflective-thinking and confidence. Young people can achieve Arts Award in any art form, from music, drama, art, poetry and creative writing. There are 5 levels of the Arts award– Discover, Explore, Bronze, Silver and Gold.
Why choose the Arts Award?
The Arts award offers a unique qualification and learning opportunity to support learners’ creativity. It aims to broaden each child’s art experiences by providing a flexible scheme of work that is accessible to all.
Arts award at Oakwell Rise
Oakwell Rise continues to embed the use of the Art award in our setting. As part of our Art offer, all children will have experienced the Arts award Discover module. We have 2 trained arts award advisors on site and each year aim to deliver the arts award to a LKS2 class. The discover module allows children to explore a variety of art forms, develop their own project and discover the work of artists and craftspeople.
One previous Arts award at Oakwell has been based around a piece of drama entitled ‘Lightning Bird.’ Children watched a live professional dramatic performance and then took part in several activities including Q and A with the production team and drama workshops. They then created their own stylistic piece inspired by the key themes they had seen. The children then documented their response to the day, discussing the skills they had learned and experiences they had shared.
Oakwell have also taken part in full day workshops with the support of Barnsley Museums. Children have explored the local ‘Cooper’ gallery and studied the art in the environment. Children then created their own sketches and evaluated the artists’ work.
In the Summer Oakwell are planning a trip to the Arts Award accredited Yorkshire sculpture park, where children will be immersed in a variety of sculpture and sketching tasks, leading up to a Discover qualification.
How does your school get involved?
If the Arts Award is something you would like to enhance your Art Curriculum please follow these steps:
Register your organisation as an Arts Award centre.
Once you’ve selected your chosen Award level, you must complete adviser training via one of the Arts Award online courses. The training courses cover everything you need to know to deliver your chosen Arts Award level.
Once training is completed you’ll receive an Arts Award Toolkit containing all the information you need to run and assess each stage of Arts Award. Registration also gives you access to our full range of resources and support!
For more information visit: www.artsaward.org.uk
