Art & Design Tecnology “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” Maya Angelou

Intent:

For our children to appreciate experience and engage with all forms the arts. For children to develop the skills within music and art to enable them to access a world of possibilities that music and art can offer them both now and later in their lives.

The national curriculum for Art and Design aims to ensure that all pupils:

Produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences
Become proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques
Evaluate and analyse creative works using the language of art, craft and design
Know about great artists, craft makers and designers, and understand the historical and cultural development of their art forms.

Our Art and Design curriculum intends to celebrate and recognise that each child is unique and encourage them to reach their full potential as artists. We look to help children become skilled, confident and creative artists. Alongside this, we aim to provide children with opportunities to broaden their knowledge and experiences of Art and Design by learning about styles, techniques and a range of artists.

Implementation

Implementation:

Across School, our Art and Design curriculum is taught through a three-stage process we call ‘the creative process’. This is taught as follows:

1. Exploring and Developing

In this stage, children are given opportunities to explore and discuss the work of other artists and find out more about them or the artistic period. Children collect ideas/research the topic and showcase this in either individual or whole class theme board/collage. Children then explore initial ideas through drawing and sketching. This should take place even if the children are working in 2D or 3D for their final piece.

2. Investigating and Making

During this stage, children are given the opportunity to develop their ideas further and plan what they want to create. Children are encouraged to try out different techniques and to apply them to materials and processes. They then create their final piece of work – either individually or collaboratively – evaluating and adapting/changing as they go.

3. Evaluating and Developing Work

Children are given time to review what they have achieved, and the work of others, and comment on it saying what they think or feel about it. Children are given opportunities to identify what they might change about their final piece or the process they have been through and what they could do to improve and develop future work.

The skills taught within our Art and Design Curriculum are introduced in Early Years and Key Stage 1 and are then revisited at a higher degree of sophistication in Key Stage 2; this allows children to deepen their understanding and improve their skills throughout their time here at Our Lady’s.

In Key Stage 1, children are taught to use a wide variety of materials to help them creatively design products. Whilst doing this, the children will begin to develop their use of artistic technique such as: colour, texture, shape and space. The children will then be expected to begin using this vocabulary to compare the works of different artists, craft makers and designers.

In both Key Stages, the children have the opportunity to keep a sketch book in which they can keep plans, sketches and examples of the skills they will be using that year. The sketch books will also be used cross-curricular as a planning and observation tool. Throughout Key Stage 2, the children will continue to master the skills previously covered whilst using a wider variety of materials including pencil, charcoal, paint and clay.

Throughout their time at Our Lady’s, children are able to work with different artists within school. Across school, children are given the chance to visit galleries and museums. We visit Kirkby Gallery termly to view the exhibitions, and participate in bespoke activities inspired by the items on display, with creative writing, art and analytical challenges linking to the curriculum . This helps to support the children in learning about different artists and mediums, while also providing them with opportunities to experience different forms of culture.

Impact

Impact:

At Our Lady’s, we recognise the unique needs of each child and support them in reaching their human potential. The impact of our Art and Design curriculum is measured in the experiences, confidence and competence of our children within the subject.

Formative Assessment is carried out by a combination of “walking the class” during lessons to address misconceptions early, end of topic quizzes, knowledge organisers (age appropriate) extended writing or any other way of capturing what a child has learnt and can remember from their curriculum. Assessment is undertaken to ascertain subject knowledge, skills, understanding of artistic concepts and recall of information to measure whether a pupil is ready to progress, needs support to progress or to identify barriers that are preventing students from making progress. Assessment doesn’t just test a pupil’s substantive knowledge, but gauges their disciplinary knowledge.

We ensure children receive the experiences they require, both within and beyond the curriculum, to develop their skills and become confident artists. Children learn about a variety of Artists, Designers and forms of visual art and are given an opportunity to revisit and improve these skills over their time in school.