Advisers’ work we’re loving this Valentine’s Day ♡

Tom Hill Castaway Music Theatre

‘Tom Hill is a creative practitioner at Castaway Music Theatre. Throughout the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, he worked with a small group of young people aged 16-25 with additional needs, supporting them to complete Arts Award online. He is now working alongside visiting DJ, Santino Roberts who is supporting the centre’s Creative Transitions group to ‘Discover a DJ’, whereby they will complete Arts Award Discover while learning from a professional DJ.’

Kim Curzon Storyhouse

‘Kim works hard to deliver Arts Award to Storyhouse’s young leaders groups, adapting her style and delivery to meet the needs of the group. She delivers Bronze, Silver and Gold across the year. She also designed a special logbook that doubles as a portfolio to use at job interviews!’

Leonie Sloots Higher Rhythm

‘Leonie has worked tirelessly with hundreds of young people pursuing Arts Award over the past two years. Even through lockdown, Leonie strived to develop and improve Higher Rhythm’s online learning platform so that young people could continue to access music making opportunities out of school. This was especially important for the centre’s many SEND learners and young people who otherwise would have had no access at all to music making programmes throughout lockdown.’

Inger Ann Britt Hedley Music Partnership North, Northumberland

‘Inger delivers a huge amount of Arts Award Discover and Explore. She has gone over and above especially through lockdown, ensuring students still had the opportunity to complete their portfolios and receive their awards. This is a recent quote from one of the schools she has worked with: ’The tutor is full of enthusiasm and works well with staff and children.’’

Petra Palmer Greenbank High School

‘Petra works tirelessly to give students the opportunity to take part in Arts Award. She has run Arts Award at the school for at least eight years and supported numerous students to achieve their awards. During the pandemic she scheduled virtual meetings every week with students, and they shared their work. She also organised an awards evening virtually with a previous student sharing her journey in the arts; what an inspiration to the pupils listening.’

Esther Wilkey Bradford College

‘She is one of the most inspirational people I have ever met. She constantly goes above and beyond to support her students, many of whom have had difficult and traumatic journeys to this country. She sees the benefit of the arts (and drama, in particular) as being a way of healing and encouraging her students to realise their potential and guide them into their futures.’

Juliet Fisher Malvern St James Girls’ School

‘Juliet is an inspiring Arts Award adviser. She is the driving force behind Expressive Arts Week – where the school’s Year 7s and 8s work towards their Bronze Arts Award. Not only does she ensure there are plenty of new and exciting arts-based opportunities for the girls to get involved with, she is also always on hand to give guidance and encouragement when needed. She’s even been known to take part in students’ Skill Share sessions and learn something new herself!’

Keisha Hamilton Northern Ballet

(Photo credit, Gavin Joynt)

‘Keisha, a Northern Ballet Dance Education Officer, travels up and down the country delivering workshops and training to both young children and Arts Award advisers as part of our Ballets for Children tour. She supports advisers to use Northern Ballet productions as a starting point for their Arts Award journey and delivers fun, character workshops to children in primary schools, SEND schools, libraries, and dance centres. ’The children absolutely loved taking part in Arts Award, particularly the dancing workshops with Keisha!.’’

Julie Norburn Art4Space

‘Julie delivers Why Art Matters through Art4Space and more than 400 children have achieved Arts Award with Art4Space's Creative Culture Club and Why Art Matters. The children are encouraged to make their education an expressive and a personal experience of self-discovery. Feedback from a school's staff member: I think the premises used for the session are exceptional. Julie’s teaching is amazing...’

Shena Edwards Peterhouse School

‘Shena has worked tirelessly to support our young people to gain their Arts Awards at all levels and, as Arts Co-Ordinator, goes above and beyond in her support of arts education to ensure that our students have access to a wide variety of artists and experiences. Shena’s work, combined with the efforts of the entire Expressive Arts team, enables our pupils to develop the confidence and experiences in arts education that they might not otherwise be able to access.’

Gill R University of Edinburgh Museums

‘As a previous Arts Award achiever herself, Gill is passionate about the opportunities offered by Arts Award to young people looking to progress their career in the arts. Gill works very hard on the admin side to make sure the young people are gathering all the evidence they require. She puts a lot of thought into how best systems and procedures can work for the young people on an individual level and dedicates time to meeting our participants one-on-one to make sure they are on track. Gill also worked very hard on our Explore and Bronze programmes, helping to create our project websites amongst other things, before progressing to undertake the Arts Award adviser training.’

David Strong University of Edinburgh Museums

‘David is the newest member of our Arts Award adviser team and has been integral to the development of our current Young Artivists programme, helping to design the programme, writing session plans, creating teaching materials and templates and organising our in-person campus visits; often a complex task due to the fact that our participants are spread throughout Scotland. David works with one of our Silver Arts Award groups and supports them with good humour, diligence and enthusiasm.’

Margarita Vazquez Ponte University of Edinburgh Museums

‘Marga is currently working with our Gold Award group and is of huge benefit to them, as she brings with her the knowledge and skills she has gained through attending art school and working for many years as an arts practitioner in a huge range of settings. Marga is extremely generous in offering her time and knowledge to our young people (and to her colleagues in developing the programme), she really takes the delivery of our programme to the next level. Like Rajpreet, Marga also played a very important role in our earlier Explore and Bronze programme as she was responsible for a large part of the content creation of these online programmes..’

Tori Cannell The Minack Theatre Trust

‘Tori has been helping us extend our outreach work by delivering Arts Award Discover and now Explore. She has been working with a lovely group of young adults who have additional needs. The group have recently received their Discover certificates and are now embarking on their Explore journeys. Tori is also working with three groups of young people who have all experienced some kind of adversity. Tori supports not only their creativity, but also their emotional needs and is a regular friendly face for these children to connect with. We’re very proud of Tori’s work and how she’s making even the smallest difference to all these young people.’

Congratulations to these advisers for their inspiring work ♡!