Bronze Arts Award: Trips and Cultural Visits - Eagle Radio Academy of Arts & Media case study
Across the summer in 2011 The Eagle Radio Academy of Arts & Media embarked on a three week project working with 10 young people from Surrey Youth Justice to help them achieve their Bronze Arts Award.
The young people’s mission whilst they were with us, was to explore the arts through the medium of radio – everything from working with a budget to create a music playlist for their target audience (who they created), to creating and producing content for their shows, to designing a logo that represented the brand and feel of the radio station.
Over the course of three weeks the group split into two creating ‘Smile & Wave FM’ and ‘Underground Radio’.
The Bronze Arts Award criteria concentrates on 4 areas:
- Exploring the arts as a participant - Exploring the arts as an audience member - Arts heroes and heroines - Arts Apprenticeship
Each category brought a new skill to the young person, allowing them to explore and learn about the arts in an informal but professional environment and build a portfolio reflecting the experiences that they’d had over the course of the 3 weeks. This was then submitted for moderation at the end of the course.
To inspire the young people when researching their arts heroes and heroines we called in a favour with DJ Mark Hill (AKA Artful Dodger) he came to our studios and chatted to the young people about his experiences in making music and DJing. He also spent some time listening to the young people’s work and giving them constructive feedback. It was wonderful to have such an influential person work with them and the young people really enjoyed working with a professional in their area of interest.
Another memorable experience that we shared was our trip up to London. We wanted the young people to experience the arts in a non- threatening, relaxed learning environment. We travelled to East London and embarked on an informal tour with a friendly guide who showed us works from the likes of Banksy and Stik. The young people really enjoyed their time – travelling up to London was exciting for them - not that they’d let us know that! They took photos of the art work, themselves with the art work – and themselves!! They also took with them clipboards where they could make notes and sketches of the work that they saw which they were really engaged with.
Upon returning to Eagle Radio they had the challenge of creating their own graffiti art work – something that reflected them and their personality. They then worked alongside a graffiti artist professional who used the design work and ideas to create a large canvas logo of their two radio stations. Their ideas were highly influenced by the work they’d seen whilst up in London.
We’re pleased to say that all 10 of the students dedicated three weeks, each achieving their Bronze Arts Award with flying colours. Their success was celebrated with a trip to a dry ski slope where they went donuting and a celebration event the following day where we watched a video of their experience, complete with audio from their time in our studios – including presenting their own shows and mixing music on our DJ decks.
It was a wonderful experience for the young people and such an achievement for them to manage to attend a full time 3 week course – some of who had barely managed to attend a full week at school for several years, others who weren’t in education or even employment.
Following on from the Summer Arts course, three students returned to Eagle Radio to work alongside some of our Music Mentors for 12 weeks where they had a one on one session once a week and created their own music demos and radio show demos. It was a delight to have them return and we hope that the experience they had with Eagle will help drive them to realise their goals in the future.
You can take a look at some of the work they created and the young people in action on our website by clicking on the link below.