Art and Design

Our Art curriculum aims 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’. The National Art curriculum states ‘teaching should develop pupils techniques, including their control and their use of materials, with creativity, experimentation and an increasing awareness of different kinds of art, craft and design.’ (DfE, 2013). 

Our Art and Design curriculum is planned following the National Curriculum, it is built around the disciplines of drawing, painting, printmaking, textiles, 3D and collage. Teachers plan using CUSP which builds children's skills and knowledge over time in a logical progression so that children acquire the intended knowledge and skills.  Each unit of Art enables pupils to study and experiment with new skills and vocabulary.

Units aim to activate and build upon prior learning to ensure better retention. The units are carefully sequenced to allow pupils to apply learning from previous lessons. We have implemented vertical progression so that pupils can revisit key disciplines and prior learning throughout their journey with increased challenge and complexity.

These documents show which units are taught throughout the year and you can find an overview of how children's art and design skills and knowledge progress through Key Stage 2: 

In addition to the core knowledge required to be successful within each discipline, the curriculum outlines key aspects of artistic development in the Working Artistically section.  Each module will focus on developing different aspects of these competencies. This ensures that we understanding pupils’ development as artists more broadly, as well as how successfully they are acquiring the taught knowledge and skills.

Here are some examples of the wonderful artwork produced by our children: 

We are also part of the Artsmark project where we collaborated with another school and worked alongside an artist to create a special piece of art for our school.  Here are some photos of our children creating the design and making the sculptures for our playground: