Arts Award Voice Hub to replace young people's booklets

‘Where’s the Silver Hub?’ has been a regular query since we launched Bronze and Gold Hubs on Arts Award Voice. Well, we are pleased to announce that Silver Hub is here! Completing our suite of free online support for young people doing Arts Award beyond Explore.

So, what exactly is an Arts Award Voice hub? The hubs are designed to offer a mix of support and stimulation which young people can access for themselves. They don’t replace the role of the Arts Award adviser but they do provide a framework for tasks, checklists, ideas and enrichment which an Arts Award participant can use to plan their work and build their portfolio.

Each hub has two sections:

Get Inspired streams a wide range of changing content relevant to that level, including case studies, how-to guides, interviews with artists and portfolio examples.

What To Do takes the young person through the award in detail, explaining how each part or unit works and providing links to useful resources.

Following consultation with young people, the hubs have been completely re-designed and are now set to replace the printed Bronze, Silver and Gold young people’s booklets, although the Bronze logbook will still be available to buy in the Arts Award shop. As an online platform, the hubs can be updated regularly to reflect advisers’ and young people’s needs. They can also profile young people’s work as an inspiration to others and share links to digital portfolios, which are regularly uploaded.

Over the coming months we’ll be adding some editable downloads which can be printed out or saved and customised on your preferred online platform. These will link with our advice on building digital portfolios. Young people can also use Voice for portfolio work - posting reviews and blogs online and adding selected work into Voice’s simple portfolio function for assessment.

To use the Arts Award Voice hubs, advisers and young people need to create a profile on Voice and sign in. Young people under 13 will need to confirm that their parents have approved them to use the platform, though please be assured that Voice is not a social networking site and no private messaging is possible. All content and comments are public and checked by the Voice Team. There is also plenty of open content on Arts Award Voice for young people to look through before they commit to doing their award – just send them to the homepage at www.artsawardvoice.com and suggest they look around.

We’re excited about the new hubs and we want to make them as useful as possible for Arts Award centres and young people. Please explore, ask your group to test them, then send us your feedback in this short survey or email Nici West ,Voice’s Arts Award Editor.

PLEASE NOTE: Bronze, Silver and Gold young people’s booklets will be phased out from the Arts Award shop between May and December 2018.