In 2014/15 Readipop and Jelly ran a number of pilot Arts Awards projects in Reading with local schools and youth organisations to learn about delivery of the then new DISCOVER and EXPLORE awards.

We learned a lot and have shared the project case studies on this site as well as these tips if you’re planning to offer Arts Awards as part of your work.

 

Role of the Arts Award Advisor

  • Ensure that the Arts Award Advisor is actively delivering/being involved with sessions.
  • Where possible make sure Teachers are trained Arts Award advisors
  • Having a ‘remote’ arts award advisor can be problematic unless there are lot of meetings and regular communication.
  • These points will help ensure no elements of the arts award get missed and that evidence is gathered.

Evidence Gathering

  • Think about how the young people will record their evidence, and how you will manage that.
  • Make sure you understand the evidence required by Trinity, and how your project meets that need balanced with what you actually want the young people to experience.
  • Have a stills/video camera on hand at all times to collect any evidence. Use it to film discussions and practical work.
  • Collate portfolios on an on-going basis – don’t leave it all to the end as it becomes unmanageable
  • Record everything as evidence – this is really useful for the participants in remembering what they did. After a whole day of activities it can be hard to recap what you have done

Partnership Working

  • Planning for a whole term in advance, not only from a school point of view but because some pupils will engage more readily in the sessions with preparation work. Will need to agree flexibility within this.
  • When working in a school try to work together and co-deliver where possible as young people are used to learning from their teacher, and also behaviour improves when the teacher is present.
  • Furthermore teachers are used to working towards assessment whereas artists (typically) less so.

Ambition/Realism

  • When trying to link in with another programme or scheme of work it needs to be planned incredibly carefully in order to ensure that nothing gets missed.

Try not to be over ambitious, on one project Readipop had to assess 120 arts logs, this is a hugely time consuming task.