Intent: Our vision for Art & Design

Our Art and Design curriculum is designed to engage, inspire and challenge pupils. We want our pupils to foster an enjoyment and appreciation of visual arts and to develop creativity and imagination through a range of complex activities, in order to produce creative and unique work. We encourage our pupils to take risks with expressing themselves. The arts are a positive force in society: children who feel ownership of the arts feel more confidence in their ability to create, challenge and explore, to be part of society, and to make change happen. The arts also create a culture of citizenship, tolerance and empathy. The arts make us happier and healthier, and equip us with essential skills that impact on our Mental Health and Well-being. At St Teresa’s, we are helping to shape our children to become the leaders of tomorrow. We endeavor to give our pupils the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own art and to develop this throughout their time with us. We believe that Art and Design is a unique way in which we can all show creativity, in our own unique and personal way.

Implementation: How we teach Art & Design

We have designed our curriculum for Art and Design to be incorporated within all other subjects, wherever possible. Our curriculum lends itself to an integrated approach to learning. In the EYFS quality learning opportunities for Art and Design are planned using the EYFS Framework (2021). There is an emphasis on independence and self-initiated learning, which enables foundation stage children to freely explore resources and pursue their own creative interests and talents in addition to the planned learning experiences. For Year 1-6 we follow a topic based curriculum based on Cornerstones. For example, Art & Design may be happening in English lessons and History lessons.

We ensure the National Curriculum objectives for Art & Design are well covered. We use the Cornerstones curriculum as well as some well-designed projects. We have created skills progression maps which teachers use to plan from and ensure good coverage of the curriculum as well as ensuring essential skills are being developed appropriately.  The use of Bright Ideas Books (sketch books) is a key focus for pupils. Children are encouraged to use Sketchbooks in as many of the subjects as possible and should be kept close at hand when creating, learning and developing new ideas. They are treated as a space where children can freely express, create, develop and learn. Sketchbooks are a safe place for students to brainstorm ideas in a low-pressure way. Because Art & Design is taught as part of a topic based curriculum this means that there might not be an art lesson every week, yet at other times (depending on the topic) there could be more than one Art & Design lesson in a week. Some topics are more heavily Art & Design based than others.

Impact:

Through lesson observations, pupils’ incredible art work, interviews with pupils and viewing sketchbooks (Bright Ideas Books) there is clear evidence of skills being developed over time as pupils move through our school. Pupils leave St Teresa’s with the ability to use a variety of resources and techniques including painting, charcoals, printing, creating sculptures with a variety of media as well as other arts and crafts techniques. Pupils enjoy learning about artists, architects and crafts people (famous and not famous) who have lived in different times and cultures. Pupils are analytical and able to evaluate and discuss their own art work as well as the works of others.

Curriculum strengths:

• Pupils enjoy many Art & Design experiences and opportunities interwoven throughout the curriculum.
• Pupils are taught that making mistakes is all part of the creative journey.
• Art and Design pupil voice tells us that pupils find Art and Design good for the Mental Health and Well-being.
• Children feel they can let their individually shine and can achieve is this subject.

Our community & families:

We use Home Learning Art & Design activities to help get our families involved in playing a role in supporting pupils when they do creative tasks at home. We have strong links with our local Secondary Schools and often visit them to enjoy curriculum enrichment activities. On occasions we have art exhibitions in school and invite parents in to enjoy the work of our pupils.

Diversity:

In choosing artists and crafts people to study we are conscious to not always focus on famous male European artists of the past. We actively try to also learn about artists from various different countries, diverse background and also to focus on women artists. An example of this is some wonderful work that our Year 5 pupils do on the South African artist Winston Saoli. Pupils studied his life during the Apartheid era and used his work as inspiration to create their own self-portraits.