Adviser support resource
Hazel Plowman,
Learning and Participation Coordinator
Bath Festivals
How Arts Award centres can adapt Arts Award for
different projects and groups of young people
About Bath Festivals
We are an Arts Award Supporter and offer free
and discounted tickets to young people working
towards their Arts Awards to events at our three
festivals. We also use our links with other local
arts providers and creative businesses to provide
opportunities for young people.
Bath Festivals is the charitable organisation
responsible for the Bath International Music
Festival, the Independent Bath Literature Festival
and the Telegraph Bath Children’s Literature
Festival. Our Learning & Participation programme
offers children, young people and adults the best
opportunities to engage with music and literature
as part of everyday life, enhancing people’s lives,
and making a positive contribution to the cultural
life of our communities. We offer Discover,
Explore, Bronze and Silver Arts Awards to young
people involved in our projects. This includes
our Young Curators Groups and young people
involved in our music project, Building Bridges.
Working with different groups
In this resource we want to share how we
approached delivering Bronze Arts Award with
two different groups we were working with, in our
Young Curators and Building Bridges projects,
to highlight how the framework can be used to
meet the needs of varying projects and young
people’s needs.
1
Building Bridges
Project outline
The aim of the programme is to involve young people in
all aspects of the curation and production of the Bath
Children’s Literature Festival and at the same time help
them achieve their Bronze Arts Award.
Students with an interest in literature, reading and
writing at a local secondary school were invited to apply
for the programme.
We had 10 students from Years 7 to 9 taking part.
They met once a fortnight after school.
The aim is to provide an opportunity for young people in
challenging circumstances to engage with inspiring and
high quality music making.
Between five and 10 young people met once a week
at their local Youth Hub to work with our Music
Leader, working on writing their own songs as well as
completing their Bronze Arts Award.
Some of the young people in the group find school
challenging and have disengaged with music there as
they struggle to participate in that setting. All of the
young people face isolation, whether this is cultural,
financial or rural.
Planning
We spent time supporting the participants’ individual
journeys, helping them become aware of the arts
activities they already took part in, and how their
participation in those could be used in their Arts Award.
We planned activities for them as part of the Children’s
Literature Festival and some of them used these as
elements of Arts Award.
For example for Part A (explore the arts as a
participant), the group took part in a writing workshop
that was happening as part of the festival. For Part B
(explore the arts as an audience member) some young
people used the experience of attending events at
the festival whilst others visited a gallery or went to a
concert and we supported them to collect the evidence
they needed for this.
We planned all the activities for Arts Award into the
project as a whole and provided all arts opportunities
for the group as they had little access to the arts in their
everyday lives.
Part A (explore the arts as a participant) and Part
B (explore the arts as an audience member) were
all undertaken as a group. The young people chose
different musicians to research for Part C (arts
inspiration), but they all completed this at the same time
during one of their sessions. They then chose different
skills to teach each other, so completed this during
another session.
Evidencing
Top
tip
Young Curators Programme
Plan around events happening in your area for Part B (explore the arts as an audience member).
What events are you running which would be suitable for young people to attend?
Find out which arts organisations are Arts Award Supporters and use them to help you.
Young Curators Programme
Building Bridges
The Young Curators were confident communicators in
the written word so took a more traditional approach
to this and had sketch books which they filled with
evidence. They took photos, made notes, did drawings,
stuck in postcards and tickets from events they visited.
They also wrote pieces for our website which they
included in their portfolios.
The young people had folders which they added photos
and comments to, but they also created a lot of video
evidence for most of the sections. Some of the young
people have had negative experiences at school so it
was important to differentiate collecting evidence for
Arts Award from school work.
Moderation
Top
tip
In future we are looking at using Artsbox and how this can support all our groups of young people.
This is a great way of collecting evidence as you go, and the app for tablet and smart phones is really simple to use.
Constantly collecting evidence for Arts Award as you go is key to making the process run smoothly.
Make sure you have the ability to collect evidence in different ways: audio recordings, video, drawing,
typing memos on a phone or using pen and paper. It’s also useful to have enough staff available to
document as well as run sessions if your young people are unable to document themselves. Perhaps use
a volunteer or workshop assistant.
Small groups (five or under) can be moderated by post,
which was perfect for our Building Bridges group, it
gave us the flexibility to get the moderation when we
were ready and made it affordable for the project.
For this project we took part in a joint moderation,
so linked up with another organisation to share the
costs. You can contact other Arts Award centres in
your area or join a moderation advertised on the
Arts Award website.
2
Plan reflection into the project
from the beginning
out and ask the young people to place
a scale of things they enjoyed most/
least. Create a line on the floor to do
this, one end a big smiley face, one
end a sad one. Use this as a prompt
to unpack WHY they put the pictures
where they did, perhaps compare the
ones they liked with those they didn’t
as a starting point for discussion. Film
or record the evaluation session, or
annotate and type up to include in the
young people’s portfolios
»» Create areas in the room for like, dislike,
not sure. Then talk about different parts
of the session and ask the young people
to stand in the area that reflects their
feelings on that part of the session.
Again use this as a starting point for
a more in depth discussion, model
answers if more support is needed
Top
tip
We have noticed that the most difficult thing
for all the young people to do, no matter what
their background and circumstances, is reflect
on their experiences. This is a major part of
success in Arts Award so it makes sense to plan
ways of achieving this, and to plan evaluation
and reflection into your project from the very
beginning. Experience has shown that asking
a young person to remember an activity and
say what they thought about it, is a particular
challenge, they really exist in the here and
now, so it helps if you weave the reflection
into the activity.
»» Take photos of the session, then print
Here are some ideas on ways that you
could include reflection and evaluation into
your sessions:
When planning and using these
exercises, remember that each
young person needs to record their
own reflection in their portfolios so
everyone’s responses need to be
collected for evidencing.