Art at The Pines

Creativity takes courage.

Henri Matisse

Vision and Intent

At The Pines School, our vision is to provide an art and design curriculum which engages and inspires children, and which enables all pupils to express themselves through creative, original and imaginative ways. 

We aim to:

Expose children to a range of artists, designers and crafts people, both local and international, and encourage children to use their artwork as inspiration for their own creative pieces.

Encourage children to express their thoughts and emotions using a range of media.

Enable children to develop their confidence and proficiency in a range of techniques including drawing, sculpting and painting, as well as various craft skills, such as collage, printing and weaving.

Our Curriculum Drivers are reflected through out Art Curriculum as it:

Enables children to explore THEIR PLACE IN THEIR WORLD by learning about a range of art and design cultures and encouraging them to embrace and celebrate diversity.

Enriches children's LANGUAGE AND ORACY by introducing them to new subject-specific vocabulary and encouraging them to express their views and opinions on both their own work, and that of other artists and designers. 

Promotes the importance of LEARNING SKILLS, such as resilience, and creates a safe space for children to explore, experiment and take risks without the fear of getting it wrong.

Values the importance of Art as a subject which can help promote the HEALTHY BODY AND HEALTHY MIND of the pupils within our school.

Implementation:

At The Pines, Art is taught using a cross-curricular approach, where art topics and skills are closely linked to the over-arching curriculum topic for a specific year group. Art skills are taught in mixed ability groups, with some skills being taught in isolation and others taught in connection with other curriculum learning, such as observational drawings of the heart being taught alongside scientific learning about the circulatory system. Lessons in art are often blocked to enable focused learning over a longer time period. Each art unit begins with an artist study, where we take inspiration from the artist, learn more about them and their style and then apply this to our own work. All children are exposed to a range of media each year giving them the opportunity to explore, develop and embed their skills and understanding of that media, from our youngest children in Early Years to our eldest in Year 6. Sketchbooks are utilised throughout the school and provide children with a place to explore, annotate and experiment with ideas. These books follow the children up through the school, allowing them to look back at the progress they have made with their art skills. 

Impact

The impact of our art and design curriculum can be seen throughout the school, whether it be in the children's sketchbooks, or on displays around school, and we believe that all children should have the opportunity to explore their creativity. Sketchbooks follow pupils up through the school and these books allow children to frequently record, revisit and modify initial ideas, leading to high quality outcomes. The structure of our art curriculum ensures children are exposed to a wide range of artists designers and craftspeople. Consequently, children at The Pines have a good knowledge and understanding of a range of artists from different time periods and cultures. 

Due to the creative nature of this subject, assessment of the children's confidence in art and design takes various forms. One important aspect is pupil voice, where children are able to express their opinions about the subject and talk about how confident they feel at using different techniques and mediums. Another way in which we assess art and design is through the monitoring of sketchbooks. These are not formally assessed, however, the children's work within them is used to inform our judgement of how effective our art curriculum is and how confident our children are in this subject.