Art

All of the staff here are involved in developing children’s engagement in the arts to encourage them as active, independent learners capable of critical and creative thinking. We want our children to love the arts and feel that they can express themselves and achieve well in this area. With our school’s emphasis on the good mental health of our pupils, it is vital that we continue to recommend to our children the arts as an outlet for their own feelings as well as understanding the actions and emotions of others, enabling them to develop resilience and self-expression.  When we consider that the arts and creativity contribute billions to the UK economy, a great many of our children are likely to enter into employment linked to this area. We are in a unique position to provide the inspiration for our learners and equip them with the skills they need and the enthusiasm to be successful both at school and throughout their lives.

Art is taught in every year group with EYFS providing continuous provision, packed with opportunities to explore and be curious about art and design throughout the day, both indoors and outdoors. Each year group from years 1-6 have bespoke ‘schemes’ of work, developed in line with pupils’ interests and with input from our pupils’ arts council. We have tailored our curriculum to spark excitement, not just at the start of a unit of work but throughout, ensuring children are able to continuously explore and develop their love of art and design.

The curriculum is designed so that children have the opportunity to revisit skills on a regular basis, beginning each new unit and each session with a chance to recall and build on the learning from previous year groups. A particular emphasis is on our pupils’ opportunities to develop their drawing skills. Every child has a ‘doodle book’ for drawing warm-ups or even random opportunities to develop and practise their skills.

A real focus for our children has been evaluation of both their art and the art of others. Going back to our art and discussing it, annotating our drawings and paintings, developing our ideas as a constant process – all of this helps our children develop a positive mindset towards their work: there is no ‘right’ piece of art, just an ongoing perseverance.

Our learners are exposed to a wide variety of artists from different time periods and with diversity in mind so that our children have the advantage of inspiration from all walks of life. Celebrating art through World Art Day and Sky Arts Week has further served to raise appreciation and awareness of art.

Through our art curriculum, pupils will gain a greater courage to take risks and try things out, not worrying about perfection and becoming self-evaluative and independent – all transferable skills, not just in school subjects but in life itself. We want our children to dream big and be able to see themselves as the artists, designers and craftspeople of the future.

Our pupils show a high level of interest in arts in school, shown by attendance at extra-curricular clubs as well as their responses through pupil voice interviews. We have held art exhibitions to showcase pupils’ work and this was popular with both children and parents/carers alike. Collaborative work with our local secondary school has further sparked interest in art as a subject to take in their next stage of education and it is our aim to continue to foster this relationship to maintain our pupils’ enthusiasm and give them more opportunities to be creative and express themselves.