What is Gold Arts Award?

Going for Gold shows you're serious about the arts and will help you to become an arts practitioner yourself, if that’s your aim. It’s just as valuable if your art is your hobby not your career goal, as it shows your creativity and leadership skills and carries UCAS points. Hear from Idriss about Gold Award…

Watch Subtitled Version

WHAT DO YOU DO?

Unit 1 – Personal Arts Development

Extend your own arts practice and develop your current art skills whilst also experimenting with a new artform.  You’ll work with another artist or practitioner to make new work which can include backstage, technical or production roles as well as creative ones.   

Find out about career development opportunities in the arts through work experience, placements, volunteering or workshops. 

Research practitioners and review arts events. Find out about and analyse the work of other artists and creatives, especially those you admire and aspire to be like. Review a range of arts experiences. Think about how this research has influenced you and your work. 

Form and communicate a view on an arts issue in the arts world – your chance to voice your opinions on an arts topic of your choice, whether it's why sports attract bigger audiences than the arts, or female representation within Rock music… 

Unit 2 – Leadership of an arts project

Plan and lead an arts project which has a public showing. 
From start to finish you're in charge of your project and will learn lots about planning, managing resources, promoting, taking responsibility and organising people…and you may have to find innovative ways to overcome challenges!  

Create an Arts Award portfolio to record your work and your progress. This could be a sketchbook, film, Powerpoint or website. Your portfolio should capture your progress as well as documenting the art work and projects you produce. It may be useful to show at interviews for jobs, apprenticeships, FE or University.
Check out these digital portfolios for ideas

HOW DO I GET STARTED?

Find an Arts Award adviser to support you and assess your work. Ask your school or local arts organisation if they’re already an Arts Award centre. Otherwise, search the Arts Award Centre Map to find a centre in your area.  

Register here on Voice and you'll get access to our Gold Hub which gives you step-by-step guidance and lots of handy tips and how-to guides to help you along the way.  

NEED SOME HELP?

  • Contact the  Arts Award Helpdesk at Trinity College London
  • Ping us a question here at Arts Award Voice on [email protected] 
  • We are a remote Arts Award centre so we might be able to help if you can’t find an adviser


QUALIFICATION INFO

Gold Arts Award is a Level 3 qualification on the Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF), which means it's recognised nationally and looks good on your CV!  It carries 16 UCAS points which can help you get into higher education. Make sure your Gold Award gets moderated before the second Friday in June to support your application. Here's the lowdown on Gold and UCAS points.  It can help you gain new skills such as action planning, setting objectives, reviewing, communication skills, team work, problem solving, being a leader and of course – being creative! 

Gold will take you about 150 hours to complete and will usually take about a year cover both parts alongside the rest of your life.

Take a look at Gold Stories to find out what other people did.