Prime Theatre are a youth theatre organisation based in Swindon, who deliver professional theatre shows to children and young people and run physical workshops and performance projects. Over lockdown, they had great success in keeping young people connected and supported 3000 children to achieve their Arts Award! Today Helen, Creative Programme Lead for Prime Theatre is here to talk about their success:
Why does Prime Theatre value Arts Award?
“Arts Award not only enables us to offer young people a meaningful qualification that can boost their confidence and support their future endeavours, but it also provides a brilliant structure in which we can support a young person to explore and develop their creativity, industry understanding and fundamental leadership skills. The process of embarking on the qualification can lead to transformations in a young person’s confidence and sense of self and purpose. It’s also a brilliant tool to use to advocate for the arts in local schools.”
How did Prime Theatre gain success with delivering Arts Award over lockdown?
“Over lockdown we ran two different programmes of Arts Award. One was a large-scale programme designed to engage 3000 Primary age children in Discover and Explore. The other was targeted at young people aged 11-25 who had been identified by the council as experiencing disadvantage, who worked towards Arts Award Bronze to Gold. The key to success with both programmes was a flexible approach to what art forms we would deliver and how we would deliver them. We worked with more multi-disciplinary artists than we had prior to Covid, and ran activity through a combination of in-person workshops, zoom workshops, and physical art packs. The other key to success was strong partnership working with schools, other arts organisations and our local LCEP, as well as Arts Award themselves!”
What would you say to someone who was thinking about adding Arts Award as part of their offer?
“Delivering Arts Award has enabled us to engage with a more diverse range of young people, strengthened our partnerships with other organisations, schools and our local council, and encouraged us to think more ambitiously about our remit as an arts organisation. It provides a fantastic structure for meaningful participatory arts engagement – I’d recommend it to everyone!”
If you’d like to find out more about Arts Award click here, and to find out more about Prime Theatre, visit their website here.