Art

“The aim of art is not to represent the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” 

Aristotle

Why we teach your child art:

Art represents and reflects the best of human activity. It can empower us to challenge the world we live in and inspire us to communicate our individual ideas, thoughts and needs. Art can uplift us, calm us, entertain us, and educate us.

Our aim is to engage, inspire and challenge pupils to express themselves through a range of materials and processes. We want our pupils to not only be equipped with the skills they need to experiment and create their own art, but to also be able to think critically about art, challenge concepts and examine what art means to them. Through developing a broad knowledge of art and artists, our children will learn how to express an opinion about the impact of art and how it can reflect and shape our history. We value the wealth of art that we have access to and encourage our children to foster a love for creativity and artistic expression that will stay with them beyond their years at our school.

What our curriculum looks like:

Our art curriculum is ambitious, and this starts right from Nursery. Our art curriculum has been designed by United Learning’s Art specialist, using the content from the National Curriculum and the Early Years Framework to carefully sequenced our art curriculum so children learn a broad range of artistic skills, using a wide variety of materials. As a school, we have contextualised and implemented in a way which works best for our children. They also learn about great artists and the cultural significance of their art forms.

Our Art Curriculum has six core principles:

• Entitlement  

​​All pupils have the right to learn about and practise different art skills.

• Coherence 

Taking the National Curriculum as its starting point, our curriculum is carefully sequenced so that powerful knowledge builds term by term and year by year. We make meaningful connections within subjects and between subjects

• Mastery 

We ensure that foundational knowledge, skills, and concepts are secure before moving on. Pupils revisit prior learning and apply their understanding in new contexts​

• Adaptability 

The core content of the curriculum is stable and as a school we will bring it to life in our own local context to inspire and meet the needs of our pupils

• Representation

​All pupils see themselves in our curriculum, and our curriculum takes all pupils beyond their immediate experience

• Education with Character 

Our curriculum - which includes the taught subject timetable as well as spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, our co-curricular provision and the ethos and ‘hidden curriculum’ of the school – is intended to spark curiosity and to nourish both the head and the heart​

Our art curriculum long-term plan can be found below:

This is underpinned by a medium-term plan which set out the core knowledge and skills children will be learning in their learning.

How we teach art:

As with every subject, we recognise what makes art unique, and as a result make pedagogical choices to ensure teaching is the best it can possibly be.

We have captured our pedagogical choices for art in our art principles which can be seen below:

How you can help your child at home:

EYFS and Key Stage 1

• Encourage your child to be creative, this could be by doing junk modelling projects or repurposing old belongings in an imaginative way
• Develop areas such as fine motor skills, creativity, planning, concentration, and perseverance
• Display your child’s artwork

Key Stage 2

• Visit art galleries or local spaces and explore the art and architecture
• Gather any materials that could be used for an art project
• Read books about art such as:

• Linnea in Monet’s Garden by Cristina Bjork
• Story Painter: The Life of Jacob Lawrence by John Duggleby
• Talking to Faith Ringgold by Faith Ringgold, Linda Freeman and Nancy Roucher.