Getting Digital with Arts Award at MozFest

To celebrate Arts Award's upcoming hosting of the Digital Arts and Culture Space at MozFest 2016, we are having a blog takeover week! Each day discover a new way of incorporating digital technologies into your Arts Award delivery, and get excited for MozFest in October!

Today we’re excited to be introducing the MozFest fringe – a selection of Arts Award centres from across the country that have offered to share their digital Arts Award plans for activities and events this Autumn. We hope their ideas and advice will inspire you to think about your own digital Arts Award delivery.  Whether it’s taking part in digital arts activities, finding out about digital artists and arts organisations, or using digital technology to explore arts and cultural collections – this is a great time to get involved.

Each day this week we’re introducing a different centre who have offered to share their work as inspiration to other centres looking to use digital technologies alongside their Arts Award delivery.  Today, it's Helix Arts based in the North East (who will also be offering a remote session at MozFest).

Helix Arts develops and delivers art projects with and for a wide range of disadvantaged communities across the North East of England across all art forms and disciplines.

Helix Arts are currently running their Off the Beat programme, a digital music collaboration project happening between Helix Arts, Cramlington Voluntary Youth Project and Northumberland Targeted Adolescent Service. It is supported by Youth Music and aims to deliver 150 Arts Awards  across all levels. It will provide music making activities with progression pathways using physical and digital jamming, platforms and formats for collaboration with a wide range of artists and youth groups.

Participants will take part in a variety of music making workshops in response to their interests and progression opportunities, ranging from song writing, to DJing, world music, found sounds and electronic; as well as media and music engineering or production.

Digital skills will be developed through music production, jamming and online sharing. Helix Arts will take an experimental approach through 'play' days and using online streaming and jams, as well as a range of performances, residentials and master classes.

All evidence will be logged using Artsbox. Included in the 150 awards they plan to support, youth workers aged under 25 will also evidence their activity as part of their Gold award.  In addition, young apprentices are working towards Silver and Gold levels.

Top tip for digital delivery:

In the fast-changing and sometimes scary world of digital we would say, first establish a common understanding of what you mean when you say 'digital'. For example, do you mean using digital technology, sharing online/digitally, or making digital arts?

Then, create the best environment for digital collaboration to happen, in and out of sessions. When it comes to harnessing young people's expertise of the latest use of tech or social media, encouraging their own tips and tricks around how apps are really being used is the best knowledge to share.

Arts Award digital fact file:

Music technology and other forms of digital music making including coding are all great arts forms that can be evidenced for Arts Award.  If young people are developing their coding skills by copying some demo code to make music, for example using a BBC micro:bit or a Raspberry Pi, this should be used as a starting point to support them to develop their skills further.  They should demonstrate that they have made creative choices in order to improve their practice and develop their skills, art form knowledge and understanding.  So once they had tried out the demo code, encourage them to use their new skills to create their own short piece of music.

MozFest – what you need to know:

MozFest is a digital festival hosted by the Mozilla Foundation taking place in London on 29 and 30 October where Arts Award will be hosting the digital arts and culture space. We’re inviting you to get involved by attending the event with young people, or by taking the inspiration from our fringe activities to shape your own digital arts delivery for Arts Award.

MozFest youth tickets are £3 (under 18s) and educators go free. Tickets provide access on both days as well as lunch, drinks and a goodie bag.  Group tickets can be booked through this link. Schools and youth organisations that need assistance with ticket costs can contact festival@mozilla.org, remember to state that you are an Arts Award centre in your email.

For further information about attending MozFest, contact julie.neville@trinitycollege.co.uk