Art Platinum Award

THE PLATINUM ARTSMARK AWARD

Another great achievement for the school! Winning the Platinum Arts Mark award has been a huge success, made possible by all departments that involve the arts.

Recently, Eastbourne College has had the privilege of being awarded the Platinum Arts Mark Award – a prestigious prize given to schools by Arts Council England for a highly impressive inclusion of "the arts" as a whole in the school curriculum. The award itself revolves around creativity and wellbeing across the school, and as of now only 74 secondary schools in the country have been able to reach this level. Eastbourne College is currently the only school in the whole of Sussex to hold the award.

When interviewing Miss Salway (Head of the Arts Award), she emphasised that the effective collaboration of departments across the school was a key reason for the achievement being made possible.

Ella Stevenson

In terms of the lengthy application process, the various departments had to make a formal proposal to the board of governors and senior management team, detailing why Eastbourne College was a worthy candidate and providing case studies to evidence this.

Despite never having applied before, the school’ s aim was to achieve the award at gold level. Impressively however, the school gained the platinum achievement (above gold) on the first try. What pushed our application straight to the top was the outstanding work done within the community, specifically the many external projects that the school has continuously organised and run.

Even when interviewing Ms Salway for this article, we were sitting in on a drama workshop involving schools from the local area, making it apparent that these projects greatly benefited from the application to this award.

It is also an inspiring way of broadening individuals’ experiences.

Beyond simply gaining this award, it has brought to light the importance of the arts within the curriculum. They provide a vital form of expression as well as the opportunity to gain a well-rounded experience of college life. This includes all forms of creativity namely photography, textiles, art, creative writing, literary festivals, drama and dance.

Rightly so, the Arts Mark award proves that the arts are vital not only as creative outlets, but also as a way to usefully link the arts to other subject areas such as STEM.

For example, the school has recently launched a marine biology project that links heavily to the photography department. This type of project alongside those which involve the community and external schools can be used as evidence when re-applying to keep the award in two years ’ time.

A design from the Textiles Department

A QR code to the Arts page of our school website