Jael Williams and Ginn Scholey from Cape UK  will be answering your questions on the Arts Award on Friday 13 November between 2-3pm GMT.

During times of economic, political and social change we all need to explore new ways of working and new partners to work with. Arts Award is relatively new to the Museums sector but more and more services are starting to embed Arts Award within their overall offer for children and young people. The number of schools supporting their pupils through Arts Award is increasing and there are also numerous youth services other informal learning settings that offer Arts Award as a means for recognising and rewarding creative work by young people.

So how can you get involved?

What is Arts Award?

Arts Award supports young people to develop as artists and cultural leaders by following and developing their own interests through new experiences. It motivates children and young people aged 0-25 to enjoy the arts, find out about artists and cultural organisations and try out new art forms. It offers them the opportunity to develop cross curricular skills including creativity, independent learning, confidence, leadership, problem solving, team working, lateral thinking and reflection and to have those skills recognised through national qualifications.

Arts Award Discover is the introductory award. Young people can progress through four more levels at different ages and stages. Arts Award Explore; Bronze Arts Award; Silver Arts Award; Gold Arts Award.

You can find out more about the different levels at www.artsaward.org.uk.

How can it work in a museum context?

Essentially, Arts Award is a way for museums to help young people explore their collections, stories and spaces using the arts and creativity.

Arts Award can help bring your collections, stories and spaces to life. Museum collections are inspiring and full of stories waiting to be unlocked. Any object can be a catalyst for creative work – even if the collection is not arts based. And many museum objects are artworks in their own rights waiting to be interpreted and reinterpreted by young people in their own ways.

Young people can achieve their Arts Award through your formal or informal learning offer. Some museums have mapped their entire learning offer to Arts Award whilst others have developed stand alone projects with schools or out of schools offers.

As part of the Award young people collect evidence and reflections on their experiences in an Arts Award portfolio or Log which can be physical or digital and include films and audio. We have worked with a number of museums to develop themed Arts Award Log Books, which provide more of a hook for schools and families to take part.

Arts Award in regional museums

CapeUK deliver the Arts Award training and support on behalf of Trinity College. We are keen to help more museums to integrate the Award into their core offer for children and young people.

We have a number of strands of work to facilitate this including:

• Training museum staff as Arts Award Advisors. Many of whom are now piloting approaches to delivering the Award alongside local teachers and families.
• Encouraging more arts and heritage organisations to strengthen their HLF Young Roots applications by embedding Arts Award in the process.
• Supporting themed approaches to delivering the Award e.g. Literacy and Heritage
• Encouraging museums already taking part in Kids in Museums Takeover Day to build Arts Award into their plans. You can find out more about how to do this at http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/7619902/arts-award-mapping-resource-pdf-189k?da=y

Most recently we have supported:

• Richmondshire Museum to deliver the Arts Award with a group of schools focusing on local heritage in their curriculum
• The National Coal Mining Museum and Barnsley Museums to create a themed Arts Award Log Books and schools programme
• Doncaster Museum and Library services to work together on an Arts Award and First World War programme for schools
• Leeds Museums and Galleries to develop a themed SEN Arts Award programme
• York Art Gallery to work in partnership with the library service, theatre and Minster on a joint Family Arts Award offer over the summer.

Arts Award is managed by Trinity College London in association with Arts Council England. There is now a suite of resources highlighting how the award has been used in museums and heritage organisations. See http://www.artsaward.org.uk/site/?id=2471

We would be delighted to talk more to you about how you can start to think about how Arts Award might work within your own contexts, and how we can support you in that process.

Get in contact with Jael Williams or Ginny Scholey at CapeUK to find out more:

Jael.williams@capeuk.org                ginny.scholey@capeuk.org

Jael Williams and Ginn Scholey from Cape UK  will be answering your questions on the Arts Award on Friday 13 November between 2-3pm GMT.

You can post questions before the Q & A session, on  13 November , or you can converse in real time with our expert. You can use the comment box below to post a question, or you can use twitter with the hashtag  #mdyask.

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