To achieve a Bronze Arts Award you have to share an arts skill with others. For a Silver Arts Award you have to show your leadership skills in an arts project. During your Gold Arts Award you have to plan and deliver a public showing of an arts project. 

With the country in lockdown, unable to get out and socialise, it may feel impossible to complete your Arts Award, or that the whole thing has to be put on pause, but this isn’t the case. How can you share a skill when you can’t leave the house? I’ve created a list of ideas to help you make the most of isolation while working towards your Arts Award.

Teach the people you’re isolating with

Assuming you’re in lockdown with other people, whether it’s family or friends, and you’re not bored of their company yet (hopefully), offer to teach them your creative skill. Gather your resources, recruit a few fellow isolators, sit them down and document your teaching experience. It would give them something to do and help with the cabin fever that a lot of people are getting during the lockdown period. My dad has been walking into my room completely bored while I’m working, so I’ve offered to give him guitar lessons! We haven’t started it yet, but it definitely seems like a great idea to pursue when the boredom hits us hardest.

Teach online

Download Zoom, Google Hangouts, Skype (or any other online platform you can think of) or get family or friends numbers for a FaceTime call, and work with them over a face-to-face (sort of) phone call to teach them your new skills. This is extremely useful for teaching people more specific and less accessible skills, as you can rope in the people that may have an instrument already, or have paints and canvases etc. It’s flexible as you can contact anyone at any time. Another perk of this is that you can share with a huge group of people (FaceTime’s maximum call size is 32 people!).  A tip: if you want to teach a large number of people, get them to mute themselves to avoid the technical issues of having a huge call, and teach away.

Post something on Voice 

Record a tutorial/instructional video, edit it together and post it on Arts Award Voice.  There will always be someone interested in giving your skill video a go. Recording and editing may take time but uploading to Voice is really easy and you’ll get a great response! Ask for feedback on how people’s learning attempts went to collect evidence for your Arts Award portfolio. 

Hopefully this gives you some ideas on how to complete the skill sharing section of your Arts Award online and remember, although this is an unusual time, it’s a great opportunity to step out of your comfort zone and share some skills over the phone or through a video call!