Artsmark and Arts Award in partnership

Arts Award is one of the many ways schools can help young people to grow their arts and leadership talents. Like Artsmark, Arts Award is supported by Arts Council England.   

In this blog, community mosaic artist Sarah, from Honey Mosaics, talks about working in partnership with Artsmark school St Paul’s Catholic School in Milton Keynes to help pupils achieve their Arts Award. 

“I would like to share a project that I just worked on with a local school, St Paul’s Catholic School. I worked with years 7 and 8 students that had signed up for the Arts Award programme. All 25 students were taken off timetable for the day and were able to spend the whole day working with me, getting to learn with a hands-on approach and having the time to work towards their Arts Award portfolio.

I started the day by introducing myself and the craft of mosaic and showed the students examples of my mosaics and some visuals from previous projects. I shared why I love to work collaboratively and why I am so passionate about the craft of mosaic. I also explained what life is like working as an Artist.

We then made a large mosaic mural together. I worked with groups of six students at a time and we rotated the groups throughout the day. When students were not working on the mosaic, they were working towards their written work and they were free to ask me questions throughout the day.

This project was a great success with most students not having ever made a mosaic before. The mural is now being proudly displayed within the school grounds on an exterior brick wall.”

Here’s what the pupils’ Art teacher had to say about the project:

“Twenty-five creative students from St Paul’s Catholic School got the amazing opportunity to work with Honey Mosaics as part of their Bronze Arts Award. For this unique project, the students created a mosaic of the school’s ethos. ‘Love. Serve. Do the best that is possible.’ This meaningful ethos was created in specific colours to represent what the St Paul’s Community is all about. Orange represents Passion, Blues suggests Love, Yellow shows friendships, and Purple represents strength and power. This was an amazing opportunity for the students to learn a new skill and be able to share these skills with others as part of their Arts Award. It was amazing!”