Intent

At SS Mary and John’s, Art and Design as an important part of the children’s 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.

We aim is to provide children with an art and design education that is relevant in our rapidly changing world through a broad, balanced and ambitious curriculum which prepares them for life beyond primary education. Art, craft and design embody some of the highest forms of human creativity. The intent of a high-quality art and design education is to 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.

Implementation

SS Mary and John’s, Art is planned for based on the National Curriculum programmes of study. It aims to ensure all pupils gain the opportunity to:

  • Have access to a varied range of high quality art experiences.
  • Provide a cross curricular art programme which is imaginative and innovative, fostering enthusiasm for art and design amongst all children.
  • Develop and stimulate children’s imagination and creativity by providing a range of visual, tactile and sensory experiences.
  • Develop children’s aesthetic sensibilities and enable them to make informed judgements about art.
  • Develop children’s understanding of colour, form, texture and pattern. Provide particular activities that give children the ability and skills to realise and communicate their ideas in drawing, painting, sculpture and other craft techniques.
  • Foster an enjoyment and appreciation of the visual arts and a knowledge about great artists, craft makers and designers and understand the historical and cultural development of their artwork, through links with the local and wider multicultural community.
  • Develop and enhance children’s ability to value the contribution made by artists, craft makers and designers and to develop skills in observation and analysis and critical responses to their own work and those of others.
  • Develop increasing confidence to evaluate work in order to develop future work
  • Inspire confidence, value and pleasure in art.

Impact

Within Art and Design, we aim to support children in finding an appreciation and enjoyment of the arts, enriching the children’s learning experience. Our Art and Design curriculum is well thought out and planned to demonstrate progression.

At SS Mary and John’s, we aim to make art and design enjoyable. We believe that progress is made through securing prior knowledge and building upon it. Each art and design lesson starts with a skill, where the children will be recapping, honing or learning a new skill relevant to their learning objective for the lesson, this will be followed with a review of prior knowledge to enable the children to make strong meaningful links in their learning. Children are given the opportunity to discover, explore and develop their skills through practical art and design lessons. Our principal aim is to develop the children’s knowledge, skills and understanding. We ensure that the act of investigating and making something includes exploring and developing ideas, and evaluating and developing work. We do this best through a mixture of whole-class teaching and individual/group activities on projects in two and three dimensions and on different scales using a wide range of materials and resources, including ICT. We recognise the fact that we have children of differing ability in all our classes, and so we provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child.