Our first post on the Arts Award blog for 2026 comes from Charlotte Jones, Curriculum Leader of the Creative Arts at Newminster Middle School in Northumberland. Charlotte shares how they’ve embedded Arts Award into their curriculum and wider school life, what’s worked well for them, and a few practical tips for anyone looking to make their own delivery as engaging and sustainable as possible.
Delivering Arts Award is a very rewarding part of my teaching role at Newminster Middle School. Through a blend of music, visual art, drama and community projects, we’ve seen first-hand how Arts Award empowers young people to grow in confidence, creativity and cultural understanding.
Why Arts Award?
Our Arts Award journey began as part of our Artsmark commitment to stretch and challenge pupils who showed real curiosity in the arts. We wanted a framework that celebrated creativity in all its forms and helped students make meaningful connections between what they do in and out of school. Arts Award gave us exactly that: a flexible, accessible way to recognise progress, showcase talent, and embed creative learning across the curriculum.
Arts Award delivery
We currently deliver Arts Award Discover, Explore and Bronze levels, often weaving them into existing school events and partnerships.
Discover is delivered mainly to our younger students (Year 5), often through cross-curricular projects. For example, all Year 5 pupils take part in our Art Bytes digital gallery project and are able to use this as evidence for their Discover portfolios along with exploring artists (Part B – Find out), experimenting with materials (Part A – Discover) and sharing their findings online (Part C - Share).
Explore builds on this foundation and is offered to pupils in Years 6 and 7. Students investigate local artists, arts organisations (Part B – Explore) and creative careers, often through visits and workshops (Parts A and C – Take part and Create) with partners such as The Baltic, Beamish Museum and local art gallery Tallentyre.
Bronze takes things up a notch. Our Year 8 students plan and deliver creative workshops for the Part D arts skills share (such as manga drawing, drumming or steel pans) during our Health and Wellbeing Days. They also organise community performances, including an annual concert at Foxton Court nursing home. This year, pupils are choreographing a dance (Part A – Explore the arts as a participant) for our Rock Stars for Comic Relief Morpeth community performance and recording a tuition video for participating schools. This not only fulfils the Part D arts skills share requirement but also connects ages through music.
Local partnerships
A link we made with Morpeth Music Society last year, through Northumberland Music Service, allowed Bronze Arts Award pupils to attend a performance and masterclass with the Tim Kliphuis Trio. This fed beautifully into Part B ‘Explore the arts as an audience member’, where they reflected on the performance they experienced. This year, pupils will attend a performance and masterclass with Royal Northern Sinfonia players.
Connecting to your current arts provision
One of the best decisions we made was to integrate Arts Award into existing school activities rather than creating entirely new projects. For instance, our Comic Relief community event doubles as a perfect platform for Bronze students to plan and perform. Similarly, our Remembrance Day and Health and Wellbeing Days include creative workshops that feed directly into Arts Award evidence.
Our holistic approach gives every student the chance to explore the arts in many ways - through musical ensembles, art installations or collaborative performances. They can also include experiences from outside school, such as instrumental lessons, dance, theatre classes and performances, directly in their Arts Award portfolios.
Developing skills, confidence and career aspirations
The impact of Arts Award has been remarkable. Students who were once shy performers are now confident leaders, directing rehearsals, running workshops and managing events with ease.
Student voice is at the heart of everything we do. Through online forms, discussion forums and Pupil Book Study, their feedback actively shapes future projects and our arts curriculum offer.
Arts Award has also strengthened our school’s creative identity. It has deepened our relationships with local arts partners and aligned our work with the Gatsby Benchmarks, showing clear links between creativity and career development. Visiting artists share their career journeys before workshops or performances, giving students first-hand insight into viable arts careers.
Arts Award as an extension of school life
Like many schools, our biggest challenge has been time - finding room in an already packed timetable. Our solution? Use what we already do. By linking Arts Award to ongoing projects and enrichment days, we make the qualification feel like a natural extension of school life, rather than an add-on.
Another challenge has been documentation. Encouraging pupils to reflect can be tricky, so we’ve introduced creative portfolio options (digital slideshows, short films and sketchbooks) to keep evidence collection fun, engaging and manageable.
Top tips for other centres
- Build on existing opportunities. Don’t reinvent the wheel - link Arts Award to projects already happening in school/your setting, like performances, exhibitions or charity events.
- Empower students to lead. Give them ownership of their creative projects. Our Bronze students love planning workshops - it’s where they really grow.
- Make reflection creative. Encourage pupils to use photos, videos or sound recordings as evidence.
- Connect with your community. Local arts organisations are often eager to collaborate - don’t hesitate to reach out.
- Celebrate success. Display portfolios, host mini exhibitions, or share performances online. Recognition goes a long way in building confidence.
With our next Comic Relief Dance Project on the horizon and plans to decorate a sculpture for the St Oswald’s Peter Rabbit Trail across Newcastle upon Tyne and Tynemouth, we’re excited to keep building creative experiences that connect our pupils to the wider community.
Final tip
If you’re an adviser or educator considering starting (or refreshing) your Arts Award delivery, my biggest piece of advice is this: start with what you love about the arts, and share it with your students. Their enthusiasm will follow naturally.
Photo by Newminster Middle School
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