Art Leader - Miss Greaves

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." - Scott Adams

Art provides educational benefits that other subjects cannot; it creates creative and visual thinkers. Art and Design fosters creativity, imagination and confidence: skills that are transferable to every other subject on the school curriculum, and critically, are indispensable in a wide array of jobs.

Art is as natural as sunshine and as vital as nourishment.

MaryAnn Kohl.

Our Art curriculum is designed to foster our children’s creativity, imagination and confidence: skills that are transferable to every other subject on the school curriculum, and critically, are indispensable in a wide array of jobs. Our curriculum is ambitious as it gives our children opportunity to experiment and invent their own works of art, from the inspiration of a range of artists. It is designed to give pupils every opportunity to develop their ability, nurture their talent and interests, express their ideas and thoughts about the world, as well as learning about art and artists across cultures and through history.

Our Art and Design curriculum is sequential, allowing children to build on their skills and knowledge. Woven throughout the units are the formal elements of art (line, shape, tone, texture, pattern, colour), a key part of the national curriculum. These key skills are revisited again and again with increasing complexity.

The four strands that run throughout our curriculum are:

• Drawing
• Painting and mixed media
• Sculpture and 3D
• Craft and design

Our Art curriculum develops our pupils’ skills year to year, ensuring that the basic skills in art are revisited and consolidated. Through this scheme of work, we are allowing our children to remember more and know more. Through purposeful, imaginative and creative activities, pupils learn to take managed risks, trying out new ideas and new ways of working without fear of failure. They work alongside a range of artists taking part in activities that focus on the seven elements of art, but that are also imaginative and enjoyable. Through high quality professional development, our teachers are confident to develop pupils knowledge, skills and understanding when making and evaluating products. Pupils are given explicit teaching of the formal elements of art and skills to enable them to see and understand a new technique or process. They are then able to experiment creatively using these skills to produce their own piece of art.

Our curriculum also contributes to the children’s personal development in creativity, independence, judgement and self-reflection. This will all be evident in their ability to confidently talk about their work and share their work through sketchbooks and displays.