Art and Design

ART & DESIGN

"Every child is an artist. The problem is to remain an artist once they grow up." - Pablo Picasso

Art & Design is a natural form of expression and can be a source of great pleasure. We encourage children to develop their creative and imaginative talents through learning skills and techniques and using a variety of materials and tools. They learn to appreciate works of art and use artistic language to describe paintings, sculptures and other artefacts.

Art knowledge is divided into four domains:

'practical knowledge’ - which is about developing technical proficiency;
‘theoretical knowledge’ - which is the cultural and contextual content that pupils learn about artists and artwork;
‘disciplinary knowledge’ - which is what pupils learn about how art is studied, discussed and judged;
'personal knowledge' - which builds an awareness of their own presuppositions and opinions about artwork.

Through engaging with a wide range of artist and makers’ work, children are inspired and develop their own ideas, but also have opportunities to explore different cultures and ideas, to ask questions and to develop a visual literacy, which enables the children to understand and respond to the world.

They consider how art and design both reflect and shape our history, and contribute to the culture, creativity and wealth of our society.

Our aspiration is for children to develop visually literate with a passion for exploring creative art and design with a range of media.

The knowledge, skills and understanding of Art & Design are taught explicitly in art lessons. The key aspects are organised into two strands art skills and techniques and exploring and evaluating to ensure that pupils’ knowledge, skills and understanding are built upon through successive years towards clearly identified year group learning outcomes.

Our progression map ensures carefully planned progress for from drawing, painting and printing through to collage, textiles and 3D work. Wherever possible activities are linked to termly topics to excite, engage and inspire passion through purposeful learning.

A child’s sketchbook stays with them throughout their school life, demonstrating their cumulative knowledge and skills from Year 1 through to Year 6. Teachers inspire the children to explore and extend their skills, knowledge and understanding in specific areas: drawing, painting, printing, collage, textiles, sculpture/3D and art through technology. Children learn about a range of artists, designers and crafts people, art movements and styles across time and cultures. Links will be made to their own projects but children will also study an artist in depth and use their observations and understanding to inspire their own art work (input, imitate, innovate).

Sketch books are used across school to explore and investigate ideas, media, and techniques to develop observational drawings and representations of imaginary worlds. By annotating sketches, the older children will begin to use sketchbooks to map out their responses.

Our Art curriculum should ensure that children leave Claypole:

with a passion for exploring a wide range of arts media;
able to apply the key principles of art: line, tone, texture, shape, form, space, pattern, colour, contrast, composition, proportion and perspective;
able to review, modify and refine their work;
able to create high-quality work for display and in learning journals that demonstrates effective lesson sequencing and progression of knowledge and skills of pupils between year groups;
with an understanding of the work of a diverse group of artists, craftspeople and designers;
able to express their opinion of the work of others, using increasingly precise art & design vocabulary.

Sketchbooks are used in school during art lessons; they’re used for experimenting with ideas and collecting drawings... often they’re used to explore themes and make compositional studies until the right idea/subject for a larger body of work is found.