Prestigious Gold Arts Awards for Cambridgeshire college students
A record-breaking three pupils from Sawston Village College have been awarded Gold Arts Award Certification from Trinity College London.
Ellen Arthurs, Izzie Allanson and Oishani Goswami started their qualification for the Gold Arts Award in Year 9 after successfully achieving Bronze and Silver awards. All students, who completed a minimum of 150 hours of total qualification time each, were awarded Gold before starting further education, a first for Sawston Village College.
Izzie Allanson
Only schools who have an Arts Award adviser can enter pupils into the programme. Lesley Morgan, Arts Development Manager for Sawston Village College and Anglian Learning Trust, was the dedicated adviser for the Gold qualifications.
Lesley said “I could not be more proud of what the pupils have achieved over the past couple of years. Their dedication, alongside revising for their GCSEs, to completing high quality portfolios of exceptional work is inspiring, and perfectly reflects the values of Sawston Village College of ambition and endeavour.
In my almost two decades as an Arts Development Manager, we have never had this number of pupils achieve Gold, and certainly not before embarking on sixth form studies.”
Ellen Arthurs
Jonathan Russell, Principal at Sawston Village College, said “Lesley’s dedication to providing pupils with extracurricular opportunities like Arts Award perfectly exemplifies our values of aiming high and working as a community. As a college, we are incredibly proud of these pupils’ achievements and we hope it will inspire further pupils to go on and complete the Gold award.”
The first Gold award was achieved by Ellen, who focused on costume and set design for her award, with Izzie then awarded in May 2023. As part of her Gold award, Izzie wrote and produced a 45-minute play, which was performed over two nights. Oishani then completed the trio when she received her Gold award in August 2023. For her work at Gold, Oishani concentrated on Indian classical dance, curating an evening of dance.
Arts Award is available for young people aged 25 and under. The awards were launched by Trinity College London in association with Arts Council England in 2005 with five levels to achieve; Discover, Explore, Bronze, Silver and Gold. The Gold award carries a Level 3 Qualification and 16 UCAS points.
To achieve a Gold Award, learners must demonstrate ‘artistic imagination and originality, creative responses which are appropriate and new to them’. Their mark includes Total Qualification Time which determines how much time they spent individually and with an adviser to support them in their artwork and portfolio.
Sawston Village College is part of Multi-Academy Trust Anglian Learning, who hold a Memorandum of Understanding with Arts Council England which recognises an outstanding commitment to arts, culture and creativity.
To find out more about Sawston Village College, please visit: https://sawstonvc.org/
