How can we encourage good leadership skills?
Maidstone Museum’s beautiful Library was the setting for our
second Arts Awards Advisers’ Forum.
During the short two hour session we managed to cram in a huge amount of
information, discussion and debate, which I will aim to summarise here. This session focused mainly on the Bronze
‘Sharing an Arts Skill’ component and Silver Unit 2, ‘Arts Leadership’
The attendees had a huge range of experience from those that
had not yet managed to run the Award to those trained in all stages. This was
fantastic as it meant that we could start to envisage a ‘buddy’ type system
where more experienced Advisers could assist those not so practised. If this is something you would like us to
develop further please let us know.
The session began with Sam Sladden leading the group in a
drama session. Sam is a young person who completed the Silver Arts Award two
years ago, and has since gone on to speak at regional conferences and be
considered for the privilege of being the next Arts Award Case Study. We asked Sam to demonstrate an example of
what could be considered appropriate for the leadership sections of the award.
He took the group through some drama warm ups and then gave us a piece of his
script (written for his Arts Award) and asked us to work through the design
elements of it. This was an insightful task that allowed the attendees, who
work in all different disciplines, to play to their strengths and interpret the
activity in their own unique ways.
This lead to a follow on from last week’s session where we
came to the conclusion that in a school setting where Advisers feel they must
encourage the whole group to work on the same project, using a stimulus could
be a fantastic way of encouraging individuality, without providing lots of
extra work for the Adviser. A stimulus could be presented, such as a script, a
painting or piece of music and individuals could then focus on it in their own
way, or smaller groups could be set up to focus on a particular aspect.
After Sam’s workshop we discussed the concept of
‘leadership’ and what qualities we can look to build on to create young leaders
(see below for the group’s interpretation of a leader). There was a huge list, most of which you
should be able to see in the images below.
We also discussed examples of when a student had done the majority of
work for an award without realising it. For example, Vicki discussed her
experience of a group of boys at a youth centre who had organised DJ workshops
for others. They had managed the whole event, and had evidenced it all in the form
of photography and so had only a small amount of work to put in to achieve an
award. Other attendees also mentioned that this had happened with students they
know. For some people the leadership qualities are absolutely already there, it
can just be a question of drawing attention to them. For others it can be a
little more difficult but by focusing on some of the qualities below they will
soon become aware that they are in possession of at least a couple of them.
We also discussed a number of different ways of ‘passing it
on’ including mass cross-teaching (as suggested by Turner Contemporary in the
last Forum), including a q&a after a performance and a summer fete where
students can teach a craft etc they have learnt. There are many, many more ways and we would
like to compile a list. If you feel like you can add to this discussion, or
expand our list please let us know.
