In this new series of blogs, we will take a focused look at each part of Bronze, starting with Part A ‘Explore the arts as a participant’. We will share some helpful ideas, tips and guidance for Part A, for advisers delivering, or thinking about delivering, Bronze.
What’s at the heart of the part?
For Bronze Part A young people should participate in an arts activity and reflect on their progress. The arts activity can be in any art form, and they could either try something completely new to them, or develop in an arts activity they are already familiar with.
What’s really important is that through taking part in the activity young people develop their interest, knowledge and skills in that art form.
Integrating arts activities in schemes of work
Activities for Bronze Part A can be incorporated within or drawn from your existing schemes of work. Think about arts activities that are already happening and how they can be mapped to the Arts Award framework. You may need to adapt them slightly to meet the assessment criteria – check your adviser toolkit to make sure you’re meeting this. Consider what activity you could build in to fulfil this part.
Things to consider:
- Is the activity substantial enough to enable young people to develop their interest, knowledge and skills in the art form? Will you need to make any adaptations such as building in time for reflection?
- Try to incorporate evidence collection into the activity itself so that young people are gathering evidence and reflecting throughout. It’s much easier and more meaningful for young people to reflect on their progress as they go along rather than try and remember everything at the end.
- Think about how you can make evidence collection fun and interesting; this might be achieved through taking photographs, filming activities and feedback, or documenting creative responses.
- If young people are in the habit of reviewing their own work as part of other activities, you could adapt these techniques for Arts Award. If they’re already familiar with a particular format for self-reflection which promotes insightful thinking about an activity, then see if it can be used here.
Reflecting on progress
Questions for your young people to think about:
- What was your favourite part of the activity and why?
- What was your least favourite part and why?
- What went well? What could have been better?
- How did you feel before, during and after the activity?
- What new skills have you learnt? What skills have you improved?
- What else did you learn?
- What would be your top tips for other people doing this activity?
- What will you do next?
Evaluation ideas
There are numerous ways in which you can support young people to reflect on how their interests, knowledge and skills have developed. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Pre-prepared proformas/templates with prompt questions
- Activity diaries/online blogs – written or recorded audio/video
- Group discussion
- Peer review activities such as question-and-answer sessions in pairs (you could use the questions above as a starting point), or comments on post-it notes to feedback on each other’s work
- Peer review ‘feedback sandwich’ (positive feedback – constructive criticism – positive feedback).
Support resources
The following resources could help with your Bronze delivery or planning:
Portfolio building templates
Evidence checklist
Bronze Activity mapping resource
Five day Bronze
We hope that you found this blog helpful, and don’t forget to keep an eye out for the next blog in this series, where we will look at Part B in more detail.