Creating Studio Awards

Page 1 | 2 | By Philip Johnston

Choosing great rewards

Ok, so you’ve established the criteria for all your studio Awards, and your students have just been unleashed in pursuit of them.

Sooner or later, they’re going to catch one. And when they do, you had better be ready— it’s not going to be enough to simply pat them on the head and say “congratulations”. Otherwise they may not feel inclined to chase next year's Awards so hard.

This doesn’t mean that you are going to have to give away new BMWs as prizes, however, you should be prepared to spend a little on each Reward (it’s not only for a good cause, but it’s tax-deductible…and if your Awards Program is so enormous that the cost of the Awards themselves becomes an issue, then your studio probably deserves to be charging higher fees in the first place - see the IMT guide to charging appropriate fees).

Before we get too creative, let’s start with the basics.

Certificates

A decade ago, you would have had to purchase certificates, or worse yet, pay to get them custom printed. But now, you can simply print them out as you need them from IMT's free Studio Stationery Collection.

Alternatively, with a copy of a program like Microsoft Publisher, Apple's Pages or (by far the most powerful) Adobe Indesign you can build your own. Make sure your studio logo or name is prominent—remember, these Awards are likely to go on the student’s fridge, or be taken in to school for show and tell, and you should not miss the opportunity for a little promotion.

Honour Boards

Again, a sheet of carboard will do, although a textured finish will look even better. Find a wall in the studio, and use this board to display the names of Award recipients. Because you have several Award types, you may end up with half a dozen boards like this. So be it.

There are two advantages to giving Award Winners the limelight like this. First of all, everyone loves public accolades—their name will be up for the whole studio to admire.

And secondly, those students whose name is not yet there will be trying to work out how it can be.

That’s ok. You can tell them :)

Stickers & Ghost Stickers

This doesn’t have to be an expensive print job—again, you can create your own custom stickers using your own desktop printer. (It’s a little fiddly the first couple of times, but experiment and be persistent – it’s worth it!)

Students will collect these stickers and put them in their Awards Book. The sticker would tell them what the award was for, when they got it, and, for a truly authentic feel, have a space for you to sign it.

And to help them chase new Awards, trace an outline in their book of a new sticker that they could be getting. The ghosted sticker will play on their minds a little, and they will be very keen to replace it with the real thing.

Print Shop Inspiration

There will be a store at your local mall that allows you to print pictures onto t-shirts or mugs. Pop in and take a look, because it’s not just a print shop. It’s a treasure trove of possible Awards—baseball hats, calendars, jigsaw puzzles, key rings, mousepads…the only limitation is budget, so you might want to limit these type of Awards for the really big awards.

The other thing you might want to consider is inquiring about bulk rates. One especially engraved pencil might be prohibitively expensive, but if you were to order 100 of them (Pencil of Notereading Excellence), not only would you have a three year supply of this type of Award, but you also will have slashed the cost of each one.

Badges

It's a tactic stolen straight from Boy Scouts. Instead of a certificate book, your students each need to have an Awards T-shirt. The shirt will be plain when they start—perhaps with the logo of your studio—but any rewards you issue will be small cloth badges, which will be sewn onto their Awards T-Shirt.

Younger students may even wear the T-shirt to lessons, as they turn themselves into a walking Awards billboard. At a glance, you can then see the triangular badges that signify Rhythm Reading quests have been complete, the octagons of Consistent Practice, and the blue rectangles of One Dozen Performances Given.

Older students will probably feel encumbered by too much dignity to wear anything like that, but will still hang on to the garment for years to come – it’s exactly the sort of thing they will discover again when they are moving house in twenty years time, and should produce a rush of fond memories.

And when I consider the things I had to do to get my Bushcraft Level 1 Badge when I was a cub scout, practicing a musical instrument would have felt like a much better option. (Can you light a fire with nothing more than a damp stick, a rock, and a handful of eucalyptus leaves? Give me a G major scale any day)

Presentation Options

If you want your students to take the awards seriously, you should take them seriously. If Oscars were simply Fed-ex’ed to the recipients, together with a letter of congratulations, nobody would pay attention to Academy Awards.

There’s three ways that you can help these Awards feel larger than life, although it’s the third one they’ll really remember.

Put it in the Newsletter

Don’t just use your studio newsletter to tell students about term dates and exam venues. Have a section permanently reserved for spelling out the Award Winners this month. Use lots of bold so the students can find their own names easily.

This means that not only did you personally tell them how proud you were, but you are now telling the rest of the studio too.

Stick it on your webpage

If your studio has its own webpage, make sure details of Awards are front and center. Again, it’s about making the accolade public, and now, the whole planet can see it.

But really, you should hold an Awards Night

At the end of every year, it is time for some red carpet. Book out a restaurant or a hall (don't feel bad about levying a fee per head for attending), organise for some students to perform during the evening, or better yet, to wait on tables. (truly!) Chat to parents, laugh with your students, and enjoy the food.

And then, in the moment where speeches would normally appear at a wedding reception, lower the houselights, put on Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance, open the envelopes and call the winners to the podium.
Be generous in your summary of each student’s achievements, and then remind everyone about how this fits in with the bigger picture: Here’s what we did this year. This is why it was important. Here’s how brilliantly your kids coped with it all.

And here’s what’s coming up in the next twelve months.

Let’s imagine now that you are a parent, perhaps wavering a few weeks’ ago about whether or not to continue with music lessons for your child. What are you going to do after tonight? After all this?With one evening of applause, and a wheelbarrow full of carefully thought-out awards, how could you even contemplate sending your children to anyone else?

 

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