St Jude's Catholic Primary School

Art & Design

Intent

At St Jude’s, we believe that Art and Design is a vital and integral part of every child’s education. Our Art and Design curriculum is engaging and enriched with activities and opportunities to inspire children to explore their own personal development in creativity and open mindedness to uncover gifts and talents and a love of the arts. A broad and balanced curriculum equips them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design.

We believe providing a nurturing environment through the use of art enables all children to participate and achieve, regardless of their starting points. We endorse Art and Design as a means to contribute to a child’s personal development through self-reflection to persevere to produce the best outcomes that they can. It helps children to communicate and express themselves in a non-verbal way, while promoting engagement. We are aware that participating in the arts contributes to a child’s mental health and well-being and so all children have the opportunity to be creative freely to express themselves.

We understand that art makes the world accessible. From inclusion and diversity to exploring and celebrating similarities and differences between peoples, places and cultures and this is something children explore through a range of artists from all around the world and from a range of backgrounds and cultures.

Art and Design enables pupils to develop a natural sense of wonder and curiosity about the world around them. At St Jude’s children will develop their understanding of the visual language of art and design (line, colour, texture, tone, colour, pattern, shape, 3D form). This will be developed by providing an accessible and engaging curriculum which will enable the children to reach their full potential.

Implementation

Our art curriculum provides a clear and comprehensive scheme of work that will show progression of skills across all key stages within the strands of Art. Within the curriculum we show our pupils a range of artists with each year group looking at least one artist. A diverse range of artists are chosen to research and focus on, linking to topics, while ensuring we cover the work of famous local, national and international artists to enhance the children’s learning.

Teaching should plan for a final piece of artwork to be produced/displayed and shared at the end of each topic. Pupils are encouraged to use their imagination through a wide variety of media and manipulative skills are developed as well as an awareness of colour, texture, design and dimension.

Key stage 1 and Key stage 2 process:

Introduction to the artist/ art form to be studied.
Learn about the background of the subject
Use a range of materials and media to develop art and design techniques in the style of the subject studied
Produce a piece of work in the style of the subject studied
Evaluate work, making links and comparisons between theirs and the subject studied.
Teachers should also encourage children to use sketch books to further develop and explore techniques when/if something spontaneous occurs (eg. Child/ren see something interesting/that’s inspires them outside). Art is not limited to art lessons, if children are inspired by something they are encouraged to make a note, sketch or stick something into their sketch books.

Key stage 2

Children should be using their sketch books frequently as a place for them to experiment and try out techniques. They should be considered an art jotter to be used regularly and by the children’s own initiation so that ideas can be review and revisited.

(the sketch books will show progression throughout the child’s own journey through our school and will follow them into the next year group so they can be used as a reference and inspiration for further work)

Pupils should be taught to develop their techniques through topic work including their control and use of materials – increasingly being able to decide and choose which materials to use to produce a finished piece.
Pupils will be taught about great artists, architects and designers in history including both male and female artist and from a diverse range of heritage.

As part of our WOWs partnership our school takes part in a biannual art exhibition. In preparation for this exhibition the children have the opportunity for collaborative working and exploring the different styles and techniques of a range of artists.

At St Jude’s we have a thriving Art Club where the children engage in fun creative activities and have visited the TATE Liverpool as a group.

Impact

At St Jude’s informal assessments of children’s art and design is an ongoing process ensuring children are supported and challenged appropriately. The children are assessed against the National Curriculum expectations on a termly basis. This data is analysed on a termly basis to inform and address any trends or gaps in provision and attainment.
Further information is gathered through pupil questionnaires and interviews; highlighting strengths and achievement and any improvements, knowledge and skills that still need to be embedded.

We have a rigorous monitoring program to ensure all the national curriculum is being covered. Monitoring in the subject takes place every half term and is fed back to staff and acted upon so that we can constantly improve our Art and Design provision in school.
Our Art and Design provision is designed to equip each child with a knowledge and understanding of influential artists and their work and with the skills and confidence to continue to develop their own creativity.