Intent

At Richard Coates Primary School, we value Art and Design as an important part of the children’s entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum. Art and Design provides the children with the opportunities to develop and extend skills and an opportunity to express their individual interests, thoughts and ideas. It is a real chance to allow pupils to demonstrate our school motto “Let your Light Shine” where all pupils will have access to high quality, real-life art experiences where they can flourish.

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. It should allow pupils to experience using a range of techniques and media with the creative process being at the heart of it. 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.

Aims 

The national curriculum for art and design aims to ensure that all pupils:

1.  produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences

2.  become proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques

3.  evaluate and analyse creative works using the language of art, craft and design

4.  know about great artists, craft makers and designers, and understand the historical and cultural development of their art forms.

Implementation

To ensure each child receives a wide range of skills and techniques the curriculum is mapped out across the whole school and divided into year groups. This allows teachers to create links with other curriculum areas such as Humanities or Science. Subsequently,  skills are built upon as the children progress through the school and a breadth and depth of knowledge is acquired.  This allows the children to practise and master their drawing, painting, printing, textiles and sculpture skills. With the use of high quality resources the children have access to a variety of different media and can experiment to find and create their own style. We provide opportunities to experiment with  line, tone, texture, shape, form, space, pattern, colour, contrast, composition, proportion and perspective. Each topic has the focus of one outcome so that pupils can produce high-quality work. At the end of each topic a high-quality display should be produced. These allow pupils to have aspirations to showcase work. Depending on the project teachers may choose some topics to run in a block rather than weekly.

The format for each topic is as follows;

Planning format

1. Observational Drawing

2. Artist/Context link established

3. Experimental work of skills required

4. Publishing individual and group pieces

5. Publishing individual and group pieces

6. Evaluations of work

Impact

At Richard Coates, art is used to allow the children to express themselves and develop their own ideas and creations. As their understanding of techniques and skills expands their knowledge of artists and cultures will evolve alongside it. We strive to create an open and experimental place for children to learn. Their sketchbooks allow for enquiry based learning, modification and reflection. Children take immense pride at seeing their art work displayed around school and create a confident and enthusiastic learning environment. Our art curriculum is set out to produce high quality work that is achieved by a mixture of well thought out planning, progression, enthusiasm,  inspiration and skill.