   |
          |
Arts Award
Letter from the Arts Award Council
Dear Mrs Whiting 
Thank you so much for bringing the BRJ rock school students to the Music For Youth festival yesterday. We have already had some excellent feedback from the session and a formal note of appreciation from the Music Education Council - and all the Arts Award publicity was picked up which is always a good sign of interest!
Please pass on my warmest thanks to all your students. I thought they were well-organised and responsible throughout the day and it was a delight to have them there. They understood their role, performed with real gusto, and spoke articulately about what they've learned through doing a Bronze Arts Award. I hope very much that they will go on to make more music and do their Silver Arts Award. I will write to your head today to thank him for the school's excellent contribution.
Thank you also for your excellent explanation of how and why BRJ runs Arts Award - it carries much more weight from a teacher running the award so successfully within a school context
The young people's Arts Award has been running for two years here at BRJ and we have just completed a very successful second year, with 27 of our students attaining a Bronze award and 3 attaining Silver, with another 3 Silver students to be moderated in September.
Diana Walton - Head of Arts Award Development for Arts Council England
Article by Mrs Whiting
The Arts Award is a national qualification which supports young people to develop as artists and arts leaders. It is offered at Levels 1, 2 and 3 (Bronze, Silver and Gold) on the National Qualifications Framework. Certificates are issued by Trinity College London.
At BRJ, all the work for the awards is completed in extra curricular time and a variety of Arts Forms are chosen by our students, to include Dance, Music, Photography, Drama and Art. 
At Bronze level, young people must take part in the Arts and our students have done so by performing in our college dance production, mounting exhibitions, performing in productions outside school and performing for smaller groups of their peers. They must research into and prepare a presentation to deliver on an arts Hero or Heroine, attend an arts event, which may be a concert, a theatrical event or a museum or gallery and prepare a power point show to post on our college Arts Award intra net site and complete an Arts apprenticeship in which they share their skills by teaching and leading others.
At Silver level students must set themselves an Arts challenge, a new approach to their chosen art form, attend and review an arts event, work in some capacity with a professional artist, complete a supervised arts leadership project and research into careers and pathways.
The Gold Level is advanced and demands much higher skill levels in the chosen art form, possibly combining that with another art form and working with another artist. They must also complete an extended leadership project. In addition, they must form a strong case for an arts issue which they care about. Students must get involved in the arts world through placement, volunteering, training and research.
In order to support each level of the award, students must produce a comprehensive portfolio, containing evidence and reviews of all the practical work they have completed. For the past two years, several of our portfolios have been retained by the Arts Award organisation for training purposes because of the high quality of the work they contain.
Next year, we shall be taking our first group through the Gold Award and certainly increasing the numbers of students taking the award at every level.
Mrs Whiting 