Art & DT

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“Every child is an artist.” Pablo Picasso

“The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Ambition

Art is where mind, body and soul come together and is an essential part of the primary curriculum. At St Mark's we aim to offer opportunities for pupils to explore many different aspects of creating, helping pupils to understand the ways in which art "connects us with our past, helps us embrace the present, and empowers us to shape our future. By exploring why art is relevant to all our lives, we aim to make certain that pupils feel entitled to develop their creativity, and understand their place in the world as creative, confident beings." Access Art.

We will deliver a rich and exciting visual arts curriculum which meets the needs of the current National Curriculum for Art.

Our key aims in art:

To foster an understanding and enjoyment of art, craft and design.
For all children to value their individual responses and development, and be able to develop confidence, self-esteem and compassion through participation in the arts.
To give all children the opportunities to develop specific art skills and reinforce established skills through progression within and across both Key Stages.
To offer all children opportunities to design and complete artworks in a range of art forms and media.
To experience a broad and balanced range of inspiration from artists and diverse cultures, to the natural world around them.
To nurture links to other areas of the curriculum where appropriate, enriching other subjects and allowing children to make connections.
To record the development of their ideas and their own skills through the use of a sketchbook.
To encourage all pupils to share and celebrate their artwork within the community.

The teaching and learning of art at St Mark’s provides children with the opportunities and skills to respond freely to inspiration, experiences and knowledge of the world around them. Through this, the children learn to make informed judgements and aesthetic decisions. We recognise art as a fundamental means of personal expression and encourage children to value their own and others’ creative contributions and achievements.

Implementation

At St Mark's, teachers support children's artistic journeys through the Access Art Primary Art Curriculum which is knowledge-rich, and pupils will learn a wide range of skills, and show clear progression and growth.

EYFS

Children in EYFS at St Mark's will be nurtured through open-ended, playful exploration of materials, processes and ideas, which in turn support dexterity skills, promote early understanding of visual literacy skills, and begin to build children's confidence in their ability to make a personal, creative response to a stimuli.

There are 7 areas of exploration:

What Can We See?
How Can We Explore Colour?
How Can We Build Worlds?
How Can We Explore Materials and Marks?
How Can We Explore 3D Materials?
How Can We Use Our Bodies To Make Art?
How Can We Use Our Imaginations?

These opportunities for exploration will provide children in EYFS with a foundation on which to develop their creativity and work towards the Expressive Arts and Design Early Learning Goals:

Experimenting with colour, design, texture, form and function; Share their creations, explaining the process they have used; Make use of props and materials when role playing characters in narratives and stories.

KS1 and KS2

Learning is built through weaving, layering and revisiting experiences centered around 3 core pathways: Drawing and Sketchbook use, Surface and Colour, Working in 3D. The Access Art primary curriculum balances technical and factual knowledge, with experiential knowledge and self-knowledge. Every child has the opportunity to find the elements of art, craft & design which resonate for them. This supports children at St Mark's to become positive learners and enriches their attitudes to learning in all subjects.

The Access Art Primary Art Curriculum is supported by a series of “Talking Points” resources, carefully curated to introduce pupils to a wide variety of artists, designers and craftspeople from across the world where contemporary artists are juxtaposed with more traditional artists and from studying them, we can learn from the way they interpreted the world.

Each pathway tells a story, forms a journey and follows a particular format over 6 weeks which promotes excellent teaching & learning: - Warm-up: Artists: Activity: Reflection - Artists: Materials: Activity: Reflection - Challenge or Brief: Artist: Activity: Reflection. Throughout the sequence, children are given space and time to explore and respond.

Impact

Art is individual and growth is personal, and both are treated as such, at St Mark's. Ongoing discourse is essential to discover intention, understanding and outcomes and provides teachers with clarity of the children's progress throughout their artistic journey. Each primary curriculum pathway has supporting "I can ..." statements to facilitate discussions and for self-reflection. Children at St Mark's will take pleasure in sharing their sketchbooks, outcomes and personal journeys with visitors. Pupils will reach the end of their primary years with confidence in their right to express themselves creatively and personally through art. We believe that the impact of an arts rich curriculum will make a positive contribution to the quality of life for St Mark’s pupils, both within and beyond school.

Further enrichment opportunities

Arty time is a club available to children at St Mark's and is held on Mondays after school.

In collaboration with the charity Wings To Fly, St Mark's invited artist Tim Davies of The School Artist to inspire and support children to create a sculptural response to their school. Further information can be found by following this link. Future collaborations to further the chiLdren's artistic development are in the pipeline!