BBC Ten Pieces: How it links to Arts Award

Arts Award and BBC Ten Pieces are working together to support schools who would like to deliver Arts Award’s unique qualifications alongside their Ten Pieces Project. 

Ten Pieces is an exciting initiative for schools, led by BBC Learning, BBC Music and the BBC Orchestras and Choirs, focusing on classical music and creativity. Ten Pieces aims to open up the world of classical music to a generation of children and inspire them to develop their own creative responses to the pieces through a range of art forms.

There are currently three sets of Ten Pieces for primary and secondary schools to explore, with a repertoire ranging from baroque to contemporary. For each piece you can find an exciting range of free teaching resources including short video introductions to each piece, six weeks’ worth of lesson plans, instrumental and vocal arrangements as well as video masterclasses to inspire students to get creative with classical music. Schools can register for news about Ten Pieces and use online resources to take part. The project is supported by more than 260 Champions including Music Education Hubs, Music Services, orchestras, film, dance and other arts organisations from across the U.K.

For more information about BBC Ten Pieces please go the BBC website.

How does it link to Arts Award? 

Arts Award is a fantastic way to recognise the creativity and engagement of students through the Ten Pieces project, giving them a great sense of achievement at the end of the process - and an added opportunity to celebrate. BBC Ten Pieces challenges young people to respond creatively using composition, digital art forms, dance, performance poetry and any other creative activity. The three Ten Pieces stages - inspiration, exploration, and performance – work well with all five Arts Award levels.

Resources to help you deliver 

We have created some resources to help you map your delivery of BBC Ten Pieces to Arts Award Discover, Arts Award Explore and Bronze Arts Award. Tameside Cultural Services have also created a specially designed arts log  that children can use to record their evidence for Arts Award Explore.

Young people can devise their own creative responses to the BBC Ten Pieces and these do not have to be focused just on music!

Here are Ten creative responses to BBC Ten Pieces: 

1. Create a piece of visual art. Many successful visual artists listen to music for inspiration. Try listening to a selected piece and putting pencil to paper, paintbrush to canvas or hands to clay! 

2. Choreograph a dance. Music and dance are best friends! Young people can experiment with diverse styles of dance and movement to compliment the contemporary and classical pieces of music. 

3. Produce a film. How many times have you been sitting on a train, gazing out of the window, listening to a piece of music and a whole narrative unfolds in your imagination! Young people can be encouraged to think visually when listening to the chosen pieces - closing your eyes can help! 

4. Devise a piece of theatre. What action could be taking place to accompany a particular piece of music? Try improvising to the music or working together to script some dialogue and scenes.

5. Write a poem. Experimenting with words that the music evokes can be great fun. Freewriting whilst listening to a selected piece can create some interesting results! Poems could then be developed further as performance poetry.

6. Compose a piece of music. Young people can be inspired to create their own original piece of music, borrowing some of the techniques or approaches from the BBC Ten Pieces.

7. Take photographs. A piece may suggest a specifc colour, setting or style of photography that can be experimented with.

8. Design…well anything. A prop, a costume, a set or even a building! After listening to the chosen pieces, young people can be encouraged to develop designs of the past or the future!

9. Animate. A storyboard is a good starting point, before looking at digital, stop-motion, 2D or 3D animation. Objects can be manipulated to compliment a selected piece of music or depict a story that is inspired by the music.

10. Digital art. Why not try getting creative with coding in response to the BBC Ten Pieces? Use our digital guidance for some inspiration!

You can also look at examples of lots of these in action and take inspiration from previous years’ submissions of creative responses in the online creative showcase.

Ten Pieces III Activities

This week, BBC Ten Pieces announced their exciting events for the 2017/18 academic year, including a Live Lesson based around Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker and school concerts! For full details visit the BBC Ten Pieces III announcement.