This is Trinity

Embracing Digital

Over the past couple of years, we've all needed to make rapid changes to our ways of working in response to an increasingly digital teaching and learning environment. This has been a huge learning curve and established teaching and assessment methods have needed to adapted to remain relevant.

This month, as well as practical guidance on how to engage effectively with Trinity’s own digital offer, we’re also sharing some experiences and advice from practitioners fully embracing the digital approach.

Supporting arts teachers and practitioners

We recognise that for arts teachers and practitioners the wider pedagogical support made available to you can significantly impact your teaching effectiveness and your students' experience.

Our ongoing support includes dedicated CPD sessions across a range of topics, with the flexibility to tailor to your specific needs, formal qualifications for music teachers, videos and articles that focus on performance and study skills, as well as how best to prepare students for exams and assessments.

Check out this month's selection of blogs, webinars and PDFs that will help enhance your arts teaching and practice.  

Supporting SEND in the arts

This month's theme brings together resources that provide information and practical tools to support arts access for young people with a range of abilities, backgrounds and individual learning requirements.

Supporting SEND in the arts includes a guide to delivering an accessible Arts Award programme, details on our adviser training courses, as well as an invite to our online Arts Award SEND networking event. You can also check out our blog about making progression and assessment accessible to all through drama, as well as our collection of drama games ideas that are suitable for mobility issue adaptations.

Personalised arts learning

At Trinity, we encourage and facilitate personalised arts learning across a whole spectrum of qualifications, assessments and resources in music, drama and the wider arts.

Personalised arts learning can take many forms, for example through creative composition, tailoring a digital exam performance, selecting a preferred text for drama or choosing a specific medium you are passionate about to explore art and creativity. This month's This is Trinity theme brings together resources that support arts learning that is uniquely tailored to drive success.  

Music Hubs & Services

Music Education Hubs and Services have a huge role to play in supporting the next generation of musicians and music lovers across the UK.

We hope that this month's theme will help you to identify how Trinity can provide support and add value to you and your local teachers and learners.

Music making in a primary setting

June 2022 marks the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Trinity College of Music in 1872. Just five years later, with the establishment of Trinity College London the college introduced to the world the idea of formal graded assessment in music, with the first ever exams available for external candidates.

Hundreds of thousands of candidates have taken a Trinity assessment since then, encouraged by our belief that effective communicative and performance skills are life enhancing, know no bounds and should be within reach of us all.

For many candidates, their first experience of the joy in music performance will be in the primary school environment. Those first experiences can start young people on a wonderful journey of creativity and expression. At Trinity we continue to support teachers and students at the beginning of that journey and this month we're highlighting some of the resources and professional development opportunities available for music making in the primary setting.

Progression and employability

Making progress in the arts - or indeed any other subject - is so important to learners and educators, especially when this contributes towards milestones such as securing a job or a place on a further study course. The arts have great potential to develop students' skills and knowledge, in due course making a direct contribution to the economy through the many employment opportunities within the creative sector, or other industries. 

Progression and employability is the focus of This is Trinity for July and this month we explore the different ways that the arts develop key skills that will enhance future prospects and develop crucial employability skills.

In our 150th year, we are particularly proud to highlight the ways that our music, drama and Arts Award assessments support learners to develop skills that will serve them well in the future, and also to shine a light on some of the Trinity graduates who are now enjoying success in their chosen creative careers.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

This is Trinity’s theme this month puts a spotlight on equality, diversity and inclusion in the context of arts education and looks at how the flexibility and range of the Trinity offer is designed to support all learners to make progress and achieve.

At Trinity, inclusion is not only a theme that runs through our qualification design and exam options, we also offer funding to support access to arts education to groups who face particular barriers.

Over the last 150 years, Trinity has evolved and grown, and so has our commitment to ensuring that arts education is accessible to those from diverse backgrounds and varying circumstances. our resources this month bring together ways in which equality, diversity and inclusion continue to inform our work.

Meeting strategic aims

This month’s focus for This is Trinity switches to the topic of meeting strategic aims. As a commercial business and educational charity Trinity supports a variety of organisations in their journey from where they are to where they want to be – from state and independent schools, Music Hubs and Services to Local Cultural Education Partnerships.

We do this through a broad range of products and CPD that can support specific educational initiatives such as Progress 8, whole class ensemble teaching, the National Plan for Music Education and Artsmark.

Take a look at this month's resources to see how we can help you achieve your strategic aims through assessment, content and training which is innovative, personal and authentic.

Singing

As we roll forwards into autumn, our theme for this month’s This is Trinity resource is singing! As one of the most easily accessible routes into music, singing is often one of the earliest experiences young people will have in musical performance, whether through Whole Class Ensemble Teaching or performing in a school assembly, choir or production.

Trinity provides a variety of opportunities for candidates to engage with singing: Whether through our Singing syllabus, or Trinity Rock & Pop Vocals syllabus for those preferring a more modern approach; to Musical Theatre in our Drama syllabus and also through Arts Award with young people able to explore the history and career of singing artists as well as reflecting on their own learning through singing.

This month’s resources include direct advice and ideas from singing teachers in our Teacher's Guide to Singing, and blogs exploring why singing is good for pupil wellbeing and how Arts Award and singing can transform a primary school.

Supporting learners

We support more than 850,000 candidates a year to take our assessments. And this goes beyond providing an exam or moderation, or even providing learning resources for candidates for exam preparation. We recognise that for a culture of arts learning to flourish, it is important for students to feel confident and empowered to make choices related to their learning.

And that is why our support for candidates encompasses collaboration with partner organisations directly supporting young people in the arts, charitable and public benefit activities to promote music education and practice to students, along with direct grants to students facing barriers to accessing the arts, through our Access Fund programme.    

Celebrating achievement

Whether through our success stories of candidates, alumni teachers and parents, our Trinity Champion Centres or Access Fund recipients, we're highlighting the people and organisations who have reached new heights. 

We're also offering resources to help you maximise your teaching success, from our tool to help you uncover the impact of your arts enrichment programmes, to our guide to Gold Arts Award.