Arts Award

Since September 2008 KEAP has been the local delivery partner for the Arts Award in Cornwall. We are very excited about this role because it gives us the chance to shout about it! What do we want to shout about?

The Arts Award is a wonderful mechanism for young people to really explore something they are interested in within a broad range of arts – to do it, teach it, experience it, market it, research it. It encourages independent learning and real understanding of arts and culture both locally and nationally. The Award is delivered at Bronze, Silver and Gold levels and is aimed at young people from 11 – 25. This role also involves us in training of advisers and of coordinating network events for young people and advisers.

For more information visit www.artsaward.org.uk

A few statistics to give a sense of scale: since the launch in 2005, 30,780 young people have registered to take part in an Arts Award in England, 991 of those are in Cornwall. So far, 12,724 Arts Awards have been achieved nationally. There are 250 Arts Award centres (schools, youth groups, and arts organisations delivering the Arts Award to young people) in the south west, 41 of those are in Cornwall. Below are some case studies of how different Arts Award Centres approach the delivery of the Award.

 

Mullion School

Students have been involved with the Arts Award from its very beginning taking on a wide range of projects including African Drumming, marketing Kneehigh, promoting Screen Actions, putting on their own exhibition at the Exchange Gallery Penzance, producing documentaries and trailers and transforming a bare playground wall into a work of art. The scheme is open to any and every interested student, and runs in a variety of ways - in lessons, out of school, as individuals and in groups.

 

Staff and students in the Art Department were keen to build on existing links with St Martin Primary School - what better way to gain a Bronze Arts Award? The research to makeover the playground wall began with visits to Newquay Zoo, Tate St Ives and Barbara Hepworth’s Garden where, as well as looking at the animals, admiring the artwork and eating ice cream, the group found inspiration particularly with the use of shade, contrast and camouflage in nature. Pictures taken, comments added and they’d explored the arts as audience members - Part B of the Award completed. The volunteers then went on to research the life and work of Henri Rousseau and of the two artists working with them on the project, Dee Hall and Joe Rainbow. And that completed Part C: Arts Heroes and Heroines. For the next stage, Part D: the Arts Apprenticeship, eleven 15 year olds took a class of six year olds teaching them to design and draw templates of leaves and flowers which they later incorporated in the final design. All that remained was Part A where young people explore the arts as participants. Ideas thrashed out, a final design created and the wall finished -- no thanks to the rain which might have helped in preparing the surface but on more than one occasion succeeded in washing our artistic efforts down the wall, across the playground and ultimately down the drain!

Having achieved his Bronze Award working in film in English lessons, Tom Gaby felt ready to take on the bigger challenge of Silver Level and volunteered to produce the trailer and documentary for this year’s Screen Actions. Tom played a leading part in the organisation of the Festival as well as directing the film team. The project gave him the opportunity to work with a number of artists whilst acquiring the skills needed to produce two pieces of film distributed countywide.
Jackie Matthews

 

Carefree

Carefree is a voluntary organisation working with young people in care. We aim to help young people gain the skills they need as they approach independence, and have a strong focus on volunteering and supporting others through our ‘peer mentoring’ and ‘arts leaders’ schemes.

Carefree has been working with the arts for the past three years. We ‘fell’ into doing things around the arts because some of the young people using our project were so keen to do creative things. These young people literally mentored their peers and gave them the confidence to become more creative and we have learnt that arts work is a fantastic way of working with young people. Learning to express yourself creatively is an important skill for any young person. For a young person in care it can be invaluable. Art and creativity can help a young person make sense not just of the film, sculpture or song they are working on at the time but give meaning and shape to other things in their life so that those things become manageable.

Our work with the Arts Award has meant we have helped in a small way to buck the trend for young people who may not get any other qualifications, or do significantly less well than their peers at GCSE. K undertook her Bronze award with us. She worked with a group to make a 3 minute film short and wrote most of the script herself; she attended a young women’s music week and learnt to play instruments and wrote a song; she researched her arts hero – Dreadlock Alien, a care-experienced Rap poet from Birmingham – and she attended a theatre production for the first time in her life. K’s example is not unique. Many young people in the care system have found ways of expressing themselves, and their lives, through undertaking the Arts Award with us. The qualification at the end is the icing on the cake.
Mari Eggins

 

Launceston College gains help from… the Methodist Church?

At Launceston College the Arts Award has recently been re-launched by Expressive Arts Coordinator Alastair Stevens with superb leadership by Tim Aldridge who has been placed in the community as a Methodist Youth
pastor! Tim wanted to help the local school; he had full a CRB check and has experience of performance, recording and theology. This approach has attracted new Arts Award candidates from all age groups, provided support for the teaching staff and inspired the young people to try out new skills, meeting for support on Wednesday lunchtimes and after school. Two Arts Award advisors under one roof but providing a very broad base of experience and personal skills. Launceston College and the community are delighted that such an unlikely yet innovative approach is working so well.
Alastair Stevens