Get Gold is the theme for a set of activities and projects for Arts Award and the Youth Network. These activities aim to help young people find out about and achieve a Gold Arts Award. This new blog series "by Emrys" aims to capture some of this, provide ideas, insight and inspiration for getting your own Gold award and will at times simply let me give off some steam. Hopefully prompting you to blog a challenging response. I'll be drawing on my own Arts Award experiences and reflecting some of the achievers that I've worked with along the way too.
I'll aim to post every couple of weeks, and if you'd like to suggest a topic or ask for my advice then I'd very much welcome your contact! This blog is aimed at anyone aspiring to or undertaking a Gold Arts Award. You could be working your way through the levels, or just wanting to do Arts Award but busy with college or somewhere else.
I'm going to kick off with a very self indulgent introduction that I hope shows a bit about where I'm coming from in my views. Then next time I'm going to be sharing my views on apprenticeships in line with Arts Award Voice's chosen theme for the month of June.
At Arts Award I have the very exciting and rewarding job of project managing the Youth Network. This means I get to work alongside some great colleagues at Trinity College London and some very inspiring Youth Network Leaders. I oversee the development of our youth teams, organise training, and recruit new members. Then I support them to attend events to speak about Arts Award, create their own opportunities to bring groups of young people together, and enable the team to have a voice in the development of Arts Award. Of course a major part of this team is promoting and updating Arts Award Voice, and I act as the Editor - leading the editorial team.
I'm a freelancer for Arts Award, which means that whilst I spend much of my month doing the best job I can, I add my wider professional and arts experiences to the role too. These include being a Director at digital agency MDK Web and Media Ltd, event & technical production company CEG Productions, and also theatre company Theatre IS.... The former two are organisations I co-founded, and they are both Arts Award Supporter organisations co-located at Unit Twenty Three, a new creative space in Norfolk. Theatre IS... delivers many Arts Awards each year along side the professional work and is an organisation that has given me a big leg up in the arts world and my career as it stands.
Of course there's some relevant content on here relating to each of these interests:
- A piece by an apprentice about a website MDK launched
- An article from a previous apprentice at CEG
- And a review of an event ran by Theatre IS
My involvement in each of these creative ventures are a direct result of my development through Arts Award, arts project management, marketing and the development of technical skills. Unit 1 of Gold led me to learn more about arts management and the fantastic staff at Theatre IS... helped on this, whilst my Unit 2 leadership project required me to plan technical production and marketing plans to make a mini festival a success.
I could carry on about my history and arts involvements, but suffice to say that its been a real journey over the past 10 years and Arts Award has been a major player in where I've ended up. So I look forward to sharing my insights with you and helping you archive your Arts Awards too!
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