Case Study: The Customs House

The Customs House is a combined arts venue; theatre, cinema, gallery and cultural development provider in South Shields. Customs House uses core funding to support its Arts Award delivery, as well as public funding from Youth Music, Clore Duffield and Heritage Lottery Fund/Young Roots. Since 2009, they have supported over 200 young people to achieve Arts Awards at all levels, from Discover to Gold.

Examples of Discover, Explore and Bronze Arts Award projects with schools include; a secondary school 'arts in health' project, a sixth form gallery exhibition, a knitting exhibition with Year 4, as well as gallery outreach with several primary schools (as part of ‘Foghorn Requiem’ a Festival of the North East).

Outside of formal education, Customs House has delivered Arts Award in a variety of settings such as; a young mums unit, a children in care council, a Glee Club, a Break Dance crew, youth theatre, and with with foster carers and their families.

Young people explore a range of art forms and are encouraged to use a variety of evidence in their portfolios e.g. audio recordings, film, photographs, 'photo story', comic books, drawings, and radio broadcasts. This ensures the portfolios are individual, and geared towards the young people's interests. 

Approach

The Customs House took part in the original Arts Award Explore 'pilot', which was delivered with two groups of children aged between 8 and 11. One group were part of 'Custom Breaks', a break dance crew based at the venue. The second group was a gallery outreach project with six children from Hadrian Primary School. The two groups had very different approaches to each section of Explore.

For Part A Inspire the Custom Breaks group used one hour of their weekly two hour evening session, over a period of six weeks, to complete this section. The gallery outreach project from Hadrian Primary School used a half day gallery visit and took part in a workshop for their Part A.

For Part B Explore Custom Breaks researched various break dancers and dancers of other styles. They also found out about The Customs House and other local venues. The gallery outreach group looked at the work of three artists: Henrik Simonsen (his exhibition was on show at Customs House’s main Gallery), Sarah Jane Szikora (North Tyneside based artist) and South Tyneside based artist, Jacquie Boyd (who was lead artist on the project). The group also researched The Customs House Arts Centre and its work.

For Part C Create the Custom Breaks children created a dance based on the work of the dancer who had inspired them. While the gallery outreach children created pieces of art based on the work of the three artist they had investigated and been inspired by, both individually and two large scale paintings working as a whole group.

For Part D Present the Custom Breaks young people shared what they had found out, and the dance they had created, with the rest of the group, which their adviser made into a short film clip. The gallery outreach group shared their artwork with the artist, the rest of their class, another class and teachers.

Impact

Arts Award has had an impact on young people across the different levels that The Custom House delivers. Many of the young people who have taken part, have progressed onto positive outcomes in education;

Danny, who struggled at school, attended a weekly break-dance class at The Customs House and achieved a Bronze Arts Award which led to him being accepted onto a Level 2 Course in Engineering at South Tyneside College.

Danielle wanted to complete her Gold Arts Award to be a more rounded young person and also to benefit from the UCAS points. In her interview for Durham University, she talked about her Gold Arts Award and what she learned from completing it, supporting her to gain a place.

Jackson, Ben, Connor and Michael all achieved a Bronze Arts Award, which gave them the opportunity to meet dance practitioners in their chosen art form of break dance. They were so inspired about the potential of what they could achieve, they all enrolled in a BTEC National Diploma in Dance at Gateshead College, and established their own break-dance crew called Battalions who perform and compete all over the UK.

Comments

‘Being an Arts Award adviser helps to nurture the talent of future artists giving them the opportunity to experience, not only the creation of their own artwork, but of the arts sector as a whole.’ Daniel Clifford, Cultural Development Assistant

‘Arts Award has made me more aware of my own art form and led me to explore exciting new opportunities and to work with great practitioners in my field.’ Jess, Bronze and Silver Arts Award achiever

‘Thank you for giving Luke the opportunity to work towards his Arts Award Explore. He is really keen to get started and seems to have lots of ideas that will keep him busy!’ Parent of Custom Breaks participant 

‘The children were very excited about doing a special project that no-one else had undertaken in their school. They enjoyed looking at all three artists work and liked the fact they also had to think about the organisation and its work too. They all reported how they enjoyed feeding back and each stage of the project was discussed with them. They also loved the fact that, for the first time ever, they would get rewarded for an ART project! A certificate! They couldn’t believe it and had huge grins from ear to ear!’ Hadrian Primary School, Class Teacher