Art and Design at Birchfield School

“Creativity takes courage.” – Henri Mattise.

Intent:

At Birchfield Primary School, we want to nurture, foster and instil a love and passion for art and design. Our carefully planned curriculum is designed to engage, inspire and challenge pupils, whilst equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own pieces of work. Throughout their time at Birchfield Primary School, we aim for our pupils to develop an understanding of artists and their artwork and to use this as a motivation for their own creativity. We value representation, ensuring that pupils are provided with opportunities to learn more about a range of artists and the contributions they have made and continue to make to art and society.

Implementation:
Our curriculum is based upon the National Curriculum and has been broken down into a structured sequence of lessons. The foundations for art are laid in our Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). In EYFS, children begin to learn the fundamental skills of drawing, printing, painting and sculpture. They begin to experiment with different tools and textures. As they move to KS1, they build on these initial skills in these areas of art and they also learn more about collage and digital media in KS2.

Within a unit, the pupils are firstly introduced to an artist and an artistic style,which will be the focus for the half term. After exploring the features of the artist’s work, the pupils then practise, apply and refine these skills in their own work, making adaptations where necessary towards the end of the unit. The pupils learn to critique, compare and discuss their work using appropriate vocabulary. At Birchfield Primary School, each of our pupils has their own sketch book which demonstrates their creative journey within each unit. These books are used to record ideas, practise new techniques and further refine their skills. We ensure diversity and representation for our children to make the learning more pertinent to them. We use retrieval practise at the beginning of each lesson to ensure learning is revisited and embedded.

Throughout our curriculum, pupils will have the opportunity to:

- Learn about different artists from a diverse range of cultural backgrounds

- Acquire knowledge and understanding of different disciplines and their features.

- Question, analyse, critique, compare and contrast art work

- Use a range of artistic skills and techniques related to each discipline (drawing,

painting, sculpture and mixed media)

- Learn how to apply the taught artistic skills using a range of materials (paint, clay, printing, charcoal etc)

- Use key technical vocabulary

Pupils have the opportunity to showcase and exhibit their work throughout the school, either in classrooms or during art exhibitions.

Impact:

Due to the nature of this curriculum area, art monitoring takes various forms. Pupil voice demonstrates that pupils talk enthusiastically about their art lessons and show a genuine curiosity and interest in the areas they have explored. In addition, senior leaders and the art leader conduct learning walks and look at sketch books to ensure progression of skills is evident. Monitoring and pupil voice shows that our pupils leave Birchfield Primary school with a range of art skills, a passion for art and a knowledge of a range of artists.