Peer support in action: Silver supporting Bronze!

As we continue celebrating schools’ Arts Award delivery on the blog this month, Katharine Gignac, Assistant Headteacher at Woodcroft Primary School in Edgware tells us about how a couple of their former pupils returned to the school to do their Silver Arts Award and for their Unit 2 leadership project ran an art club for younger pupils who were doing their Bronze Arts Award.

Woodcroft Primary School have been a Trinity Champion Centre for several years and we embarked on a programme of enrichment more than a decade ago, offering Year 6 pupils an opportunity to gain a Bronze Arts Award. Our Bronze delivery is integrated into the fabric of our teaching throughout the school year, which makes it possible for us to easily manage the four components. Over the years, we have had hundreds of pupils achieve Bronze Arts Award with us. Many of those pupils have gone on to pursue the arts both in and out of school. However, when our former pupils return to collect their Bronze certificate from us, many have expressed their dismay that their secondary schools do not offer them the opportunity to do Silver Arts Award. 

In 2025, we decided to offer Silver Arts Award to an eager group of Year 8 pupils* (former Woodcroft Primary pupils). The club began in September with five pupils and two of them submitted their portfolios in July. This highlights the challenge of providing Silver outside of the main school day as one of the reasons some students didn’t continue was because they found it too difficult to balance class work with an additional club. Scheduling weekly contact time with the Silver pupils was the most challenging issue because of the demands of their timetables, as well as finding an artist to engage the students in meaningful dialogue about career development and opportunities. This was because the two pupils chose very different topics and wanted their artist to be relevant to their projects and their desired future career pathways. Both pupils contacted their chosen artist in person and via email, but one pupil found it more difficult than the other to find an artist willing to be interviewed.

Making it work for everyone

To align with the suggested 60 guided learning hours for Silver, the first hurdle was to find an efficient way to plan time that would work for both pupils and the adviser (as a guide, this equated to two hours per week for the whole of the school year). Secondly, we wanted to ensure that offering the Silver qualification would offer benefits not only to the Year 8 pupils, but to the current Year 6 pupils too. Therefore, the Year 8 pupils ran an after-school art club as part of their Unit 2 leadership project for the current Year 6 pupils to attend as part of their Bronze Arts Award. I provided them with a classroom and then the Year 8 pupils resourced the project including preparing the materials (slideshows, examples etc) and ran the club themselves without support.

How we made it work

September / October twilight sessions

• Unit 1 Part A (Plan an arts challenge): all participants assessed their strengths and weaknesses in the art form that they were interested in pursuing and set a challenge for themselves. The action plans with targets involving research and the creation of products. 

October twilight sessions 

• Unit 1 Part B (Implement and review the arts challenge): the participants assessed their own activities as well as supporting each other with constructive feedback. 
• Unit 1 Part C (Review arts events): this unit was done individually as both participants had different interests and requirements. They shared their experiences with each other in the subsequent twilight sessions.
• Unit 1 Part D (Arts research): this unit was done partially as a twilight session (developing appropriate questions), thinking about how to find and contact different artists and investigating different artistic provisions that might be available to them in the community.

November / December twilight sessions   

• Unit 2 Parts A & B (Plan a leadership project and Plan the practical issues): the pupils developed the idea that they would like to give back to their primary school by offering to start an art club for the pupils in Year 6 who were working towards their Bronze Arts Award. Discussions about the length of sessions, permissions and the choice of pupils took place in preparation to start the club in the spring term.

January / February twilight sessions 

• Unit 2 Part B (Plan the practical issues): Planning the art project that they would deliver as part of the art club including the design of the lessons, creation of materials (digital content), assembling physical materials, reviewing health and safety issues; agreeing a timetable and being clear about the expectations when in a place of responsibility eg. dismissal of pupils, giving the school at least 24 hours notice if they were unable to attend and making arrangements to complete the project.

March / April / May / twilight sessions

• Unit 2 Part C & D (Effective arts leadership and Working effectively with others): Twilight sessions were partially given over to running the art club for Year 6 pupils. The Silver pupils each took four sessions to lead the learning and create art with the Year 6 pupils while the other spent the time working on their portfolio. This not only provided a platform for the leadership element but also positively influenced the Year 6 pupils in the club who took on board the presenting and leadership skills that they used in their Arts Skills Share (Bronze Part D). The conversations between pupils were valuable; the younger pupils were interested in learning art skills as well as being able to ask about the opportunities that they might find in their new secondary schools. 

June twilight sessions 

• Unit 2 Part E (Leadership project review): These sessions were earmarked for Part E, however, both candidates did much of this in their own time and used the contact time with their adviser to talk about unfinished elements of their portfolios and to file evidence.

One of our Silver pupils is now applying for a place at a specialist arts college and the other is starting her GCSE preparations and is an avid actress, photographer and materials artists who will find a way to incorporate the arts in her everyday life in some way! This Silver project was a pilot, and we hope to be able to offer Silver Arts Award bi-annually based on demand. We recognise that the arts play a significant part in our lives and offers enjoyment in many different forms.

*Silver Arts Award is designed for ages 14 to 16 and is open to anyone aged 11 to 25

Photo by Woodcroft Primary School