Art & Design

Intent

At Frithwood Primary School, we believe that high-quality Art lessons will inspire children to think innovatively and develop creative procedural understanding. Art and Design is valued as an important part of the children’s entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum. Our Art curriculum provides children with opportunities to develop their skills using a range of media and materials. Children learn the skills of drawing, painting, printing, collage, textiles, 3D work and digital art and are given the opportunity to explore and evaluate different creative ideas. Children will be introduced to a range of works and develop knowledge of the styles and vocabulary used by famous artists, architects and designers.

The skills they acquire are applied to their cross-curricular topics, allowing children to use their art skills to reflect on and explore topics in greater depth; for example, by sketching historical artefacts in detail, researching geographical locations to support their work on landscape painting or using art as a medium to express emotion and thought to enhance their personal, social and emotional development. Many areas of art link with mathematical ideas of shape and space; for example, when printing repeating patterns and designs and thinking about 3D shapes to support structures. It is paramount that artwork be purposeful; be this as a means of expression or to explore the styles of other artists that inspire our own work. Pupils should be clear what the intended outcomes are and have a means to measure their own work against this.

Implementation

To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in art and design, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Art and design are taught as part of a termly topic, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. Teachers plan lessons for their class using our progression of knowledge and skills document. The progression document ensures the curriculum is covered and the skills/knowledge taught is progressive from year group to year group.

The emphasis on knowledge ensures that children understand the context of the artwork, as well as the artists, architects and designers that they are learning about and being inspired by. This enables links to other curriculum areas, including humanities, with children developing a considerable knowledge of individual artists as well as individual works and art movements. A similar focus on skills means that children are given opportunities to express their creative imagination, as well as practice and develop mastery in the key processes of art: drawing, painting, printing, collage and sculpture. Children’s knowledge and skills are built upon over a sequence of lessons which lead to a final piece.

Impact

We want our Art and Design provision to impact our school community in the ways listed below:

• Art and design learning is loved by teachers and pupils across school
• They are always keen to learn new skills and work hard to develop those shown to them
• Teachers have high expectations and quality evidence can be presented in a variety of ways
• The children’s art is very often cross-curricular and helps them to express feelings and emotions in art, as well as show their knowledge and understanding in other areas of the curriculum
• All children use technical vocabulary accurately and pupils are expected to know, apply and understand the matters, skills and processes specified
• Children will become more confident in analysing their work and giving their opinion on their own and other works of art
• Children show competences in improving their resilience and perseverance by continually evaluating and improving their work
• Classroom displays reflect the children’s sense of pride in their artwork and this is also demonstrated by creative outcomes across the wider curriculum
• The school environment also celebrates children’s achievements in art and demonstrates the subject’s high status in the school, with outcomes, including sculptures, enhancing the outdoor as well as indoor environment 

We monitor the impact of our Art and Design provision through reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes, pupil discussions about their learning, which includes discussion of their thoughts, ideas, processing and evaluations of work, lesson observations and monitoring of Art books.