As the year comes to a close, we’ve taken a moment to reflect on the past 12 months and identify the most popular posts on the Arts Award blog. Here’s a countdown of the top five posts from 2024.
- Extra-curricular Bronze Arts Award creating a ‘buzz’ for ceramics
Ruth Stewart, Head of Art at Southend High School for Girls explains how their extra-curricular Arts Award activities provide a safe, positive environment for many of their students and enables them to work in small groups to explore ceramic-making in more depth; resulting in a ‘buzz’ in the art department.
- Arts accreditation options for schools
Arts-based accreditations offer numerous benefits for children and young people, and play an important role in helping schools gain recognition of their arts offer. In this post, we look at the options available to schools seeking accreditation for their arts activities and how the various programmes, awards and qualifications can support your school’s priorities.
- Tips for creating personalised digital portfolios
As part of our ‘portfolio building and creative evidencing’ theme on the blog throughout April, adviser Kim Hutchinson from Arty Artisans shares how she encourages young people in her visual arts-focussed groups to create digital portfolios which are both unique and individual.
- Arts Award’s new assessment model: Your questions answered!
Following on from the changes made to the Arts Award assessment model last December, many of you got in touch with queries as you began to work in this new model. In this blog we answer the most common questions we received about the assessment process, to help you understand the changes.
And coming in at number one…
- Introducing the Arts Award Portfolio Examples Hub
In April, we introduced the ‘Arts Award Portfolio Examples Hub’ - a new go-to destination for advisers and young people to explore example portfolios. The new hub offers inspiration and guidance on crafting impressive Arts Award portfolios and gives you insights into what constitutes a high-quality portfolio to empower and illuminate the journey towards Arts Award excellence.
Your feedback
What do you make of our list? Does it ring true with what you find most useful? We would love your feedback on what we share on the blog and what you would like to see posted in 2025. If you would like to give your feedback, we invite you to complete our really quick survey here!
And a few other blog posts you might have missed…
Now that you have had a look at the top five posts that you were reading in 2024, don’t forget the Arts Award blog has a wealth of content for you to explore! The blog will be back in January, continuing to celebrate the arts, education, and the fantastic work of Arts Award centres across the country.
Discover some of our other posts
Collaborating with circus performers for Arts Award with Creative Briefs
Yasmin at Creative Briefs explains how they collaborated on a live design brief with circus performers, roller-skaters and even dancing hippos and shares tips for compiling written evidence when working with neurodivergent young people.
Arts Award – the alternative way
We featured Alternative Provision settings in March and in this post Hazel at SENse Learning describes how the flexible nature of Arts Award really benefits their students in a 1:1 setting.
How many words is a photo worth?
In this post, Melanie at Treasure House (London) CiC shares with us how they use photography as a way of enabling young people who experience barriers to communication to communicate.
Creative evidencing: a personalised approach to Arts Award delivery
As part of our ‘portfolio building and creative evidencing’ theme, Ade at Hopewell School explained the importance of Arts Award being delivered according to each young person’s individual preferences and how this can be supported through the use of creative technologies.
Bringing art collections to life to engage diverse young audiences
In July we celebrated arts and cultural organisations and Gill at Brave Bold Drama told us about their partnership with Bristol Museum and Art Gallery and how, through their company’s ‘alter ego’, The Company of International Artists, they encourage children and young people to engage with museum and gallery collections whilst also achieving Arts Award Discover.
Arts Award in technical theatre at Formby High School
For our theme, ‘backstage and technical theatre’ in October Victoria at Formby High School shared how their students work their way up from Bronze through to Gold, taking on a number of backstage and/or technical theatre roles at the school.
Arts Award as an extra-curricular activity in schools
Sara Jane at Alvechurch C of E Middle School explains how she delivers Bronze and Silver Arts Award as an extra-curricular offer during lunchtime and form time and how this gives pupils a unique environment to work in.
We hope you’ve enjoyed revisiting some of the most read posts in 2024 – keep an eye on the blog in 2025 as we have some exciting posts planned.
From all of us in the Arts Award team, we would like to offer you our best wishes for the festive season and a happy and healthy new year!
Top banner image: members of Fairchildes Primary School Steel Pan Band (taken from this Charanga blog post)
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