Arts Award at CoMusica Inclusion, Sage Gateshead

We are pleased to announce that CoMusica Inclusion projects and related projects have achieved 35 Arts Awards since April ’15.

~~They are 6 Discover, 27 Explore and 2 Bronze. Successes have come from Arches Academy (Foundationz Girlz, Arches Access), CoMusica Foundation Training, Ferndene hospital and Thomas Hepburn School. We also have approximately 55 more Arts awards in progress, due to be completed by the end of March 2016. These include young people from our Music Spark and Young Carers projects. This would be approximately 24 Discover, 9 Explore, 25 Bronze and 1 silver. We have a moderation visit booked on December 17th.

It has been great to see how our music practitioners have embedded Arts Award delivery (when appropriate) into their practise. A key factor has been to make sure that there is a consultation process with the young people themselves; this gives them some ownership of the process and a voice in how the qualification will be delivered. Another crucial factor has been the support and engagement of partner staff in the delivery. They often have more contact with the young people in any given week than our practitioners do and so can support learning outside of the project.

More broadly across Sage Gateshead’s Learning & Participation Programme we have 29 Discovery Awards from the boys choir ‘Quay Lads’ that are almost complete. The schools programme has also been successful in applying for the Arts Award ‘We are Ten’ programme and in partnership with Cedars Academy in Gateshead, is due to start just after Xmas.