Top 5 posts on the Arts Award blog in 2025

With the end of the year fast approaching, we’ve looked back over the last twelve months to discover which Arts Award blog posts published in 2025 proved the most popular. This year we featured a wide range of case studies, insights, updates and top tips. After reviewing the posts that sparked the most interest and engagement, we’ve put together a countdown of the top five most-read Arts Award blog posts of 2025.

Danielle Murphy, Creative Learning Manager at A Mind Apart in Sheffield described how the flexibility of the Arts Award framework enables them to respond to each of their young people’s individual needs and how achieving the qualification has opened up doors for them to further their education or follow a new career path.

4. Arts Award empowering creativity for young people with SEN

In January we posted a blog by David McKenna, Course Leader for Expressive Arts at ALP Nuneaton (Alternative Learning Provision) who shared his journey of implementing Arts Award at his setting and explained how it has had such a transformative impact on their young people.

We launched a new series of blogs in October taking a focused look at each part of Bronze, starting with Part A ‘Explore the arts as a participant’. This first post in the series shares some helpful ideas, tips and guidance for Part A, for advisers delivering, or thinking about delivering, Bronze. The post covers what’s at the heart of Part A, integrating arts activities in schemes of work, reflecting on progress and ideas for evaluation.

This blog post pulls together a number of tools we’ve come across which we think advisers working with young people who have SEND, additional learning needs or SEMH needs might find helpful when delivering Arts Award. Covered in the post are ideas for accessible software, tools to assist with speaking and writing, planning and evidence tools, and portfolio formats to name a few.

And coming in at number one…

In our most-read blog post of 2025, Dr. Simon Brown, Director of Education at the Music Learning Collective in Nottingham shared how their multi-partnership Arts Award Discover project transformed the lives of their young people, built their creative confidence, and enabled them to unlock their full potential. Read about how the project participants worked collaboratively to design and record all of the foley, music and voice-over for a short animation and then found out about influential artists and sound designers. To complete the project, participants presented their work during a celebratory sharing session.

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 2026. 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 2025, 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:

Gaming as a tool for creative expression

Throughout August, we celebrated digital arts on the blog and Luke Fraser, Mentor and Arts Award Consultant at MindJam explained how gaming can be used in Arts Award projects and how this has enabled them to recognise and celebrate the achievements of their mentees (young people).

Arts Award at 20: celebrating our journey and looking ahead

With Arts Award turning 20 in the autumn and 750,000 Awards achieved, Catherine Sercombe, Trinity College London’s Head of Performance took the time to pause, take stock and share some of the stories behind the numbers.

The power of creative technologies in Arts Award delivery

The Arts Award Lead at Hopewell School in Essex, Ade Ikoli talks through the many amazing creative technology tools his students use for their Arts Award projects as they redefine what it means to be creative in the 21st century. The school embraces emerging creative technologies through their Creative Media lessons, by embedding them as creative tools that shape how students develop, reflect, and share their artistic work across all levels of Arts Award.

Why festivals are the perfect creative playground

In May, Chris Baldwin, Co-founder and Director of Sonic Boom Music CIC in Burton-upon-Trent explained how they deliver Bronze Arts Award as part of the festival and he shared his top tips for other advisers considering integrating Arts Award into their festival.

Ten top tips for delivering Arts Award Discover on a tight budget

We celebrated Arts Award Discover on the blog in March and in this post, we shared our top tips to help you make the most of the Discover resources available to you and how to stay within your budget. Delivering Arts Award on a tight budget can feel challenging, but with some creative planning and resourcefulness, it’s possible to run Arts Award Discover and keep costs low.

Arts Award Discover: a fusion of Shakespeare, circus arts, history and heritage

In this post, Wendy Smith, Education Officer at SS Great Britain in Bristol told us about their collaborative Arts Award Discover project which unlocked meaningful learning experiences and lifelong memories for a group of school pupils.

The joy of ordinary and extraordinary moments while delivering Arts Award

Claire Everett, Art Leader at Cranborne Middle School in Dorset told us about all the special moments you can experience, the memories you hold, and the legacy that Arts Award has had in her school after helping 675 young people achieve an Arts Award over the last 14 years.

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!

Photo: Art Classes Group by Cordelia Noble