Art and Design

Art and Design

Intent

What is Art?

Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artefacts (artworks), expressing the author's imaginative, conceptual idea, or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power.

Where to start?

Art, craft and design embody some of the highest forms of human creativity. A high-quality art and design education should engage, inspire and challenge pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design. As pupils progress, they should be able to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of art and design. They should also know how art and design both reflect and shape our history, and contribute to the culture, creativity and wealth of our nation. 

What do we want our children's experiences of Art to be?

At Ravensworth Terrace Primary School, we want to provide our children with an Art curriculum which is inclusive to all and supports our whole school ethos of providing high quality teaching and enriching experiences , allowing  our children to reach their full potential. We will work with local art providers and charities such as The Thought Foundation, The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts and AccessArt to provide cultural opportunities for our children and CPD opportunities for our teachers; giving them the confidence to facilitate and deliver art lessons which are a rich and ambitious creative outlet for our artists of the future.

What do we want Art to look like in Early Years?

At Ravensworth Terrace Primary School, we want our youngest children to have access to opportunities that create an active exploration of the natural world. We want to encourage the children to look at the world as a place containing elements they can manipulate and transform. We want to develop hand-eye coordination and dexterity skills. We want our children to have the freedom to learn, investigate and express themselves through play and to explore early mark making. We want our Art education in the Early Years to be inclusive, exciting and engaging; working alongside other key areas of development such as promoting early Literacy and Numeracy skills. We will help our children to see Art as a way of expressing themselves and showing what makes them individual but also showing how we all have things in common and that we are all very special. We want to show our little learners that Art is a way of making ourselves physically and mentally healthy and start them on a journey of self expression through the Arts which will continue throughout their lives.

Implementation

What will our whole school focus be?

“By the age of seven, most young children have a very strong opinions about their art ability. They will define themselves as belonging to one of three ability groups; good, OK or useless. This definition is very powerful and long lasting and is formulated by observations of peers and of classroom or playground conversation. Quite paradoxically, most children still enjoy art immensely despite their anxieties.”

Paul Carney NSEAD Primary Art and Design Education Consultant

We have made the decision to simplify the curriculum in order to deepen and improve and will, therefore, focus on the three key elements of; drawing, painting (and printing) and sculpture (all elements of 3D work).

We aim to offer a curriculum that will provide progression and opportunities for mastering techniques linked to: drawing and sketching, use of a sketch book, painting, printing, textiles, use of clay, creating 3D sculptures from other materials, learning about the work of key artists, architects and designers and then enable the children to use the work of artists to explore their own ideas and give them the language skills needed to evaluate their own and others’ work.

Impact

What are our areas of attainment?

Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, we will deliver our Arts education programme within the areas of factual, conceptual, procedural and metacognition knowledge and skills.

Our Art Curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes;
• A celebration of learning for each term which demonstrates progression across the school;
• Pupil discussions about their learning; which includes discussion of their thoughts, ideas, processing and evaluations of work.

Our main progression targets will build year on year and all Art programmes of study , delivered through the Cornerstones curriculum, and taught as will follow the same structure; enabling consistency across year groups and clear progression and opportunities to revisit previously taught skills.