{"id":11256,"date":"2020-10-19T16:46:12","date_gmt":"2020-10-19T15:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=11256"},"modified":"2020-10-19T16:46:12","modified_gmt":"2020-10-19T15:46:12","slug":"arts-award-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/2020\/10\/19\/arts-award-at-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Arts Award at Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

During lockdown the University of Cambridge Museums wanted to offer children and young people the chance to complete a Discover Arts Award from the comfort of their own homes for free. We hoped this would be a great way to encourage creativity among young people, keep them busy during school closures and school holidays, and give them a sense of achievement at a time when young people are at risk of low morale and motivation. <\/span><\/h2>\n

For those not familiar with Arts Award, it\u2019s a suite of qualifications which inspire young people to grow their arts and leadership talents \u2013 it\u2019s creative, valuable and accessible. Discover is Arts Award\u2019s introductory qualification and as such is really inclusive as it is an attainable goal for young people of all levels and abilities.<\/span><\/p>\n

We worked in partnership with Cambridgeshire County Council\u2019s Arts Council-funded programme The Library Presents, who were developing their own programme of virtual activities \u2018The Library Presents in Your House<\/a>\u2019<\/span>. We were fortunate to receive funding from them to develop a digital Discover Arts Award resource to add to their offer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Excellent work inspired by the Botanic Garden\u2019s Petal Power home activity<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The opportunity to complete a Discover Arts Award is usually an important part of the UCM\u2019s summer offer: young people are often able to complete the Arts Award as part of the Fitzwilliam Museum\u2019s summer programme and at the UCM\u2019s provision at Cambridge County Council\u2019s ChYpPS events<\/a> \u2013 activities for children and young people which take place in outdoor recreational spaces in the city<\/span>. Therefore, we were really keen that we were still able to make this offer available to children and young people in our community, and even contributed the resource to the ChYpPs online programme<\/a> this summer.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Fantastic collage work<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We mulled over the best way to design this resource so that it would be as accessible and easy to use as possible. We decided that the best way would be to create a series of short videos which would guide young people through the three components of the Award: discovering a range of artforms and creating artwork of their own, finding out about an artist who inspires them, and sharing what they\u2019ve made or learnt with others. Filming and editing videos were new skills for many of us and we don\u2019t often have to be in front of the camera. It\u2019s been a steep learning curve but we hope our videos, albeit a bit homespun, did the trick! <\/span><\/p>\n