Five steps to entering young people for Arts Award

You’ve just left Arts Award adviser training full of ideas for starting your Arts Award delivery back at your centre. You’re thinking about how Arts Award fits into your setting as well as trying to negotiate timescales, budgets and working with young people - all with their own ideas and interests. So how do you get through that first entry of young people for Arts Award? How do you even get started? We have the answers! *

*or as many as we can fit into a blog post!

We think there are five simple steps you need to take to ensure you are prepared and ready for your first entry of young people for Arts Award:

1. Plan your delivery using one of our free online planning tools (available via the adviser resource library) including our comprehensive school resources pack. You can also contact Arts Award Support if you have any questions or would like additional support. Make use of the adviser resource library as we have a huge range of resources and guides available to you for every level.

2. Recruit young people – this can be a whole year group, class, after-school or targeted group of young people. Use our recruitment presentation to help frame your recruitment drive. If you are running a range of Arts Award levels, think about how you can integrate your delivery (page 30) so they complement each other. And if you are running Arts Award with a large group, we have even more resources and support available.

3. Kick start your Arts Award! Have a launch session where you can generate excitement about Arts Award and talk about what young people will need to do to complete their Award. Look at our ‘Five Steps to Success’ resource for more ideas and to help guide you with some starter questions to get young people thinking about their Award. If you are running Discover or Explore, think about how to make this an exciting session even if the content of their Award is quite structured and guided.

4. Have a mid-Award health check with each young person. Ideally review their portfolios and work continuously, but this is a good opportunity to take stock of progress. Book a free support session – either face-to-face (if you meet our criteria), or remote via phone/email/video call. If you are running Silver or Gold, make sure the young person is fully prepared for their final leadership project, and they have appropriate support to work alongside professionals, demonstrate working with others/part of a team and to attend and review more than one arts event. If you are delivering Discover or Explore, you should continually review portfolios and ensure evidence capturing is built into your delivery – especially if running Discover in a Day or Explore in a Week!

5. Enter young people for Arts Award once your project has completed and you have fully completed your own internal assessments of all arts logs/portfolios. For all levels other than Discover, always allow eight weeks from the point of providing young people’s details and marks via the centre portal to the issue of certificates in the event moderation is required. Discover certificates are dispatched in paper format within four weeks from the date you entered young people for Arts Award. 
   

    

   And that’s it! Good luck with your first entry of young people for Arts Award! Now, what about next time round…?