Intent

North Denes Primary school believes that art and design is a vital part of children’s education as it enables them to develop their creativity and communication whilst giving them the opportunity to feel and think through a range of tools, media and materials. Our aim is to provide an art curriculum where children are able to develop their understanding of the visual elements of art and design through generating their ideas, evaluating, drawing, painting and collage, printing and 3D form. Throughout their journey, they will progressively develop skills and techniques through exploring with line, colour, shape, space, form, tone and texture as well as understanding a range of diverse artists. These elements will be developed by providing a curriculum which will enable children to reach their full potential.

Implementation

The skills and knowledge that children will develop throughout each art topic are mapped across each year group and are progressive throughout the school. The emphasis on knowledge ensures that children understand the context of the artwork, as well as the artists that they are learning about and being inspired by. This enables links to other curriculum areas, including humanities, with children developing a considerable knowledge of individual artists, as well as individual works and art movements. Children are given opportunities to express their creative imagination, as well as practise and develop mastery in the key processes of art: drawing, painting, printing, textiles and sculpture.

Coordinated whole-school project work ensures that art is given high status in the curriculum. This includes the school’s participation in the annual ‘christmas tree festival’ competition at Great Yarmouth Minster where the children make christmas tree decorations and compete against other local schools.

The school’s high-quality art curriculum is supported through the availability of a wide range of quality resources, which are used to support children’s confidence in the use of different media. The school’s amount of space is also utilised, with planned opportunities for learning outside the classroom. Our whole curriculum is shaped by our school vision which aims to enable all children, regardless of background, ability or additional needs to; cooperate, achieve, respect and most importantly, enjoy their learning and be the best they can be.

Impact

By the time children leave North Denes Primary School, they would have developed:

• Use visual language to show an understanding of the key principles: line, tone, texture, shape, form, space, pattern, colour, contrast, composition, proportion and perspective.
• Communicate fluently in visual and tactile form.
• Draw confidently and adventurously from observation, memory and imagination.
• Explore and invent marks, develop and deconstruct ideas and communicate perceptively and powerfully through purposeful drawing in 2D, 3D or digital media.
• Have an impressive knowledge and understanding of other artists, craftmakers and designers.
• Think and act like creative practitioners by using their knowledge and understanding to inform, inspire and interpret ideas, observations and feelings.
• Have independence, initiative and originality which they can use to develop their creativity.
• Select and use materials, processes and techniques skilfully and inventively to realise intentions and capitalise on the unexpected.
• Reflect on, analyse and critically evaluate their own work and that of others.
• Have a passion for and a commitment to the subject.

North Denes encourages consistent use of children’s sketchbooks, which means that children are able to review, modify and develop their initial ideas in order to achieve high quality outcomes. The opportunity for children to refine and develop their techniques over time is supported by effective lesson sequencing and progression between year groups. This also supports children in achieving age related expectations at the end of their cohort year.

Children’s artwork is displayed across the whole school to give them a sense of pride in their work whilst also demonstrating the progression from KS1 to the end of KS2. The school environment also celebrates children’s achievements in art and demonstrates the subject’s high status in the school, with outcomes, including sculptures, enhancing the outdoor, as well as indoor, environment. The art curriculum at North Denes contributes to children’s personal development in creativity, independence, judgement and self-reflection.