Arts Award is a range of unique qualifications that supports anyone aged up to 25 to grow as artists and arts leaders, inspiring them to connect with and take part in the wider arts world through taking challenges in an art form – from fashion to digital art, pottery to poetry. Please visit here for more information.
Bronze Arts Award in Lockdown (June 2020)
Congratulations to six of our Youth Theatre Members who took on the daunting task of undertaking Arts Award Bronze over lockdown. We were delighted to work with Rachael from Third Angel to deliver this. The group met over Zoom in June and July and developed their knowledge, skills and talents by taking part – both our Rachel and their Rachael agree that Audrey, Babette, Beth, Evan, Greg and Millie exceeded our expectations and produced some truly exceptional work!
Silver Arts Award (July 2018)
Having achieved Bronze back in 2017, three of our Senior Members, Alfie, Dillon and Maya decided to undertake the Silver Arts Award in the following year. This qualification is the equivalent of a GCSE and our three intrepid artists achieved their Silver award two years before they got their GCSEs! They worked on this over the course of a year and we were very proud of their achievements and were delighted when they received their certificates!
Two years on, Dillon, Maya and Alfie agreed to reflect on their experiences and each write about the three different areas of their Arts Award journey.
Part A – Arts Practice and Pathways – Arts Challenge by Dillon
The Arts Challenge part of the Award involved planning, carrying out, and reviewing an activity which would challenge areas where we didn’t feel like we were as strong. For me, I found that when it came to theatre I always tended to prefer entirely devised pieces and I often shied away from any sort of script work so I came up with my challenge around that. One week at grow we looked at the script to The Good Person of Szechwan by Bertolt Brecht where the main character has two different personas which they use in different situations. I took this idea and decided to write a short script for 4 characters that I’d perform with a group at Grow where each character had two personas, like the protagonist in The Good Person of Szechwan. Challenging as it was to write a script, it was a great experience and I learnt loads of skills that I then took forward into any devising or writing that I did after that. I still look back at the script I wrote occasionally and even though I definitely feel like I could write something better if I did it all again, I’m still proud of what I did and it was a great way of challenging myself to do something that would normally be well outside my comfort zone.
Part A – Arts Practice and Pathways – Reviewing Arts Events and Researching Future Opportunities and Careers in the Arts by Maya
For the Arts Events section, I reviewed Wonder (film), Our Country’s Good and The Wizard of Oz (theatre) – if you click on the links, you can read my published reviews here! I appreciated the practice of writing reviews and I definitely improved from my Bronze review. It was really nice to be able to see a range of things, and our experience was massively improved by Sheffield Theatres giving us free press night tickets! You can take a look at my published reviews here
For my Arts Research, I looked into British Sign Language integrated/accessible theatre for my and it was so interesting! I used YouTube to learn some basic BSL and did research into different opportunities to combine sign language with theatre, such as workshops or university courses. I was also very lucky to interview three great practitioners working in this field. First, I interviewed Fiona Buffini, who directed the Ramps On The Moon Our Country’s Good production. I also interviewed Jo Verrent, senior producer of Unlimited, and Erin Hutching from the DH ensemble. I was told that learning BSL to a high level is key, and to watch as much integrated theatre as possible. And also to remain aware that I have hearing priviledge and so I should only be doing this work to amplify d/Deaf voices. I felt like my Arts Research genuinely helped me think about my interests and my future and it provided me with some great resources to get started!
Part B – Arts Leadership by Alfie
For my Arts Leadership, I decided to direct a piece of my own choreography for use in a bigger piece of theatre. This meant that I had to choreograph two sets of movement that fitted into the overall theme of the piece and that were different enough from each other so that it did not feel repetitive. For these pieces of choreography, I took time researching various pieces of movement and stringing actions into sequences for the group I was working with to use. The other part of the Arts Leadership was planning everything out and making sure that I communicated these plans well. This meant that every week I had to make a plan and email to the Workshop Leader in order that she could create slots in the workshop that I could work on my movement choreography with my group. When it came to working with my group, I put a heavy emphasis on getting the group on my side and communicating well and effectively with them by listening to them and taking feedback on board as we rehearsed. This part was crucial, as the movement choreography was not something everyone was familiar with and perhaps was outside some of the group member’s comfort zone. In particular there was one person who ended up getting injured, which made it tricky for them to continue rehearsing resulting in me having to focus and work closely together with them in order to keep their confidence up and working around their physical limitations, caused by their injury.
Overall, I had a lot of fun planning, leading and choreographing the sessions. I found that as well as developing good leadership skills, I had also learnt to become a more rounded and organised person by expanding my collaboration skills too.
