Arts Award
Arts Award: Supporting children and young people to grow their creativity and gain 21st century skills
Six local primary schools (who already have trained Arts Award Advisors within their setting) are participating in the unique ‘Fusion Arts Award Explore – Ambassadors Programme 2023’. The programme offers funding towards moderation costs (kindly provided by Barnsley Museums Heritage Trust) and the opportunity to be part of a celebration event at Horizon Community College in June (which will be part of Barnsley’s first Festival of Joy).
This exciting initiative follows the successful 2019 pilot programme that saw over 250 children in Barnsley pursue ‘Explore’ Arts Awards to develop new skills; gaining a formal vocational qualification for their artistic and creative achievements in school. All reported extremely positive impacts on attitudes to learning, engagement, depth of learning and creativity.
The pilot programme’s Celebration Event enabled the schools to showcase their pupils’ achievements. The evening brought the schools together (including some of the pupils and their families), along with The Mayor of Barnsley and prominent figures in the arts and cultural sector, such as Eloise Unerman (Barnsley’s Poet Laureate).
‘The Celebration Event was invaluable and gave many of our children, who have very little access to the arts, the opportunity to be part of something special and be able to share their work, we expect that this will have a lasting impact on them’.
The Benefits to Pupils
Arts Award Explore takes a ‘child-led approach’, which all schools in Fusion’s pilot programme reported as being incredibly worthwhile. They observed:
- Increased levels of engagement in learning.
- An improvement in behaviour.
- An increase in confidence during their Arts Award journey.
Each school cited several instances of a child exceeding expectations as they were given ownership of their own work,
“One of our pupils watched a short clip of his film and wasn’t happy with it, so he then did a view of the world he is in from a fly’s perspective. Watching the excitement from him and the joy he had when he showed the film to the rest of the class was definitely a magic moment”
Some schools reported that the child-led approach had a positive impact across the entire class.
“The ‘magic moment’ was our challenging cohort of Year 3 children achieving the Arts Award and feeling that sense of success. I remember walking into the classroom and seeing the entire class engaged in their creative projects, taking risks, trying something new and working collaboratively. All of these things were areas in which this particular class struggled. The broadening of horizons and the raising of aspirations was also a big part of our success in piloting the project.”
“… children spoke with such passion, pride and positivity about the journey they had taken and the final product they had produced. All children spoke about how freeing it had been to choose their own learning and make key decisions on their own. They wanted to stress that it had increased their independence and confidence to make decisions and have a go in other aspects of their life”.
Become a FUSION member
Follow the link below and submit the form, and one of the FUSION team will be in touch shortly to discuss.
