An exercise to begin the Arts Award

In our last session Vicki introduced the forum group to an exercise she uses regularly with groups of all sizes, ages and abilities. Its great at identifying skills and areas of interest that the participants have. It is also is a way of identifying an individuals arts challenge that can be used in Bronze and Silver and other levels. When coming to evaluation it is a point to look back on a develop progress. The best thing about it is that its fun!


Materials needed: Something to draw with, Paper

1) Ask the group to draw around both their hands on one side of paper. If they have large hands they can overlap!

2) In one of the hands ask the group to write/ doodle/ draw positive things about them selves e.g. skills, their personality, what they enjoy. This can sometimes be an exercise within itself as some groups find it very hard to say positive things. You can suggest things to encourage them by telling them your own or ask the to ask someone else in the group to give them a positive point they've noticed about the person. Aim for a minimum of 5 things and 3 of those to be arts related.

3) In the other hand we create wishes for ourselves. Try to not call this a 'negative' or 'bad' hand. Changing the language to 'I would like to be a better listener' is more proactive than 'I am rubbish at listening'. Again make sure some of these are arts related.

4) The final stage is to discuss your 'hands' and find challenges. How this is done depends on the group; some groups may be willing to share with everyone, others may want to work with a partner or you on a one to one basis. The idea is to identify a goal or challenge for the individual that they feel comfortable about. This may jump out of the I wish hand, or it may be a combination of using skills they are already good at to achieve something new. For example many of our participants are great at drama but want to take it further by writing a script or directing. Others have combined feeling comfortable in the group with a new skill such as photography and photographed the group rehearsing and performing.

Enjoy the exercise and don't forget to revisit the hands when evaluating and reflecting!

Artsbox, Objects, Stories and Puppets

In March we had two forums so we also welcomed Peter Morton, from Knuckle and Joint Theatre, to the second session with his great Puppetry workshop. Peter demonstrated some fun and interesting tasks on how to transform an ordinary object into something creative and imaginative.

Rose, from Artwork, provided everyone with fliers and leaflets and a look into the new 'ArtsBox' concept. ArtsBox is an online dropbox service whereby you can link and collate any photos, videos or imagery to portfolio's, viewed by a Moderator.

Please see our earlier post on signing up to Artsbox here

Peter lead the creative activity...

Using Objects:

1. Pass around an object, eg; an umbrella, a book, a shoe
2. Each person had to respond with "This is not a ...","It is a ..." In which people were invited to think creatively of a different object instead, i.e; "This is not a shoe, this is a ship, sailing in the sea".
3. Change the object for new ideas.
4. Pass around again without repeating and of the previous objects already mentioned.

Secondly, Peter split the group in two to create our very own puppets, simply out of a mug and a dish cloth. The key was to:

1. Accentuate the body stance with detail to movement and breathing.
2. To establish a point of focus on the puppet from the puppeteer/puppeteers. This enables the audience to focus on the puppet.
3. Add an objective; a daily routine for the puppet to move to i.e. getting out of bed, getting dressed, etc.
4. Change the object and do the same.

The outcome of the sessions were great and we look forward to welcoming everyone to the future Forum sessions.

The Gift of Gold

Our last forum welcomed artist, musician and facilitator Peter Cook. Peter lead a thought provoking session stimulated by GOLD! We listened to music, viewed pictures and played games before launching into the main activity.






I always find other people's games really interesting and have 'borrowed' 3 of Peter's already.









One great game for warming up was 'Pass the Clap':

Group size: 5 or more players Group age: 5 up (may need to be adapted)

1) Ask the group to stand in a circle
2) Start off a clap that gets passed around the circle from player to player, you can slowly build up speed. Make sure it is passed consecutively and no one claps too soon!
3) Introduce the two clap rule. If someone claps twice on their go the clap gets sent the other way around the circle (Peter advised us to only let each person use this once or it tends to get stuck).
4) If the group get the hang of it introduce the 3 clap rule. If a player claps 3 times on their go the clap skips the person next to then and jumps to the next player!

A great simple and fast paced focus game.



We continued the session exploring poetry and comparing our feelings on Gold to the actual award.



We really got into discussing how gold is a precious gift, showing maximum effort and dedication. It is also a gift that is passed on the next person. This is exactly one of the aims of the Arts Award, in creating young creative leaders to pass on their gifts to the next generation.



We discussed how the progression of Bronze, Silver and Gold could be used in this way to pass on experiences between groups. If you were running them simultaneously, in schools for example, you could have the groups delivering to eachother i.e. the taking part of bronze could be a project run by silver or gold particiapants.

 

Thanks to Peter's diversity as an artist and facilitator, we were easily able to grasp sing cross art forms from poetry, to drama to music. This really relates to the challenge set in Gold Award in participants finding  new art form or challenging their existing one.

An answer to some of our school questions?

An interesting article from Arts Professional on how to use Arts Award in school, a hot topic at many of our forums! http://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/magazine/269/feature/arts-accreditation-schools?utm_source=Weekly-Good-Reads&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Arts-accreditation-in-schools&utm_campaign=14th-November-2013

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.