Art and Design

Ethos:

At Grimes Dyke, we want our children to love art and design and to grow up with ambitions to become illustrators, fine artists, designers, animators amongst many other future careers. We believe Art and Design should engage, inspire and challenge pupils, whilst equipping them with the knowledge and skills to be able to experiment, invent and create their own works of art and design without fear of judgement or criticism. 

Our curriculum:

Our art curriculum is organised into thematic units, with links to other areas of the curriculum to enhance children’s learning experience. Knowledge and skills are built on, throughout the year groups in order to securely embed understanding. Every unit of work begins with the study of an artist where children explore the ideas and meanings behind their artwork. Throughout a unit of learning, children are given opportunities to experiment with artistic techniques and materials. They will also spend time developing specific skills at their own level. Towards the end of each unit, Children will then be given time to create a final piece of work making use of and applying the skills they have learnt throughout.

In order to become a successful artist, we recognise the importance of thinking critically, as well as developing an understanding of their own and others’ cultural heritages through the study of a diverse range of artists, craft makers and designers. The artists we have selected have been chosen with this in mind. Children will explore aritists from a variety of different time periods, places and who use different mediums to create their art. They will assess and evaluate the work of these artists and apply this to their own and peers work. 

Sketchbooks:

All of our work is documented in sketchbooks which are taken up with the children as they move through school. The beauty of a sketchbook is that it provides students with a safe place to explore their ideas, practice new skills and make mistakes without the fear of judgment from others. Whether it’s improvement in skills or creativity, being able to see students’ growth as an artist in one space is invaluable not only to teachers but also to the children themselves. They enable children to try out ideas, techniques and reflect critically on their work. 

Assessment:

Feedback is regularly given to children during the lessons through peer and teacher observations and assessment. Teacher's record the progress children have made against the learning objectives for that particular unit of work. Evidence of this is provided in sketchbooks.

Take One Picture:

Each year, we take part in the Take One Picture project at Grimes Dyke. This is where we take a whole week to solely focus on one piece of art work from The National Gallery in London. We begin the week by introducing the art work and artist to the children. We then encourage the chidlren to lead the learning and create their own pieces of work related to the piece of art. This often results in a variety of cross curricular work being created from Nursery right through to Year 6, including: poetry, research, natural installations, paintings, scultpture, drawing, printing, story writing, animations and many more. At the end of the week we display the work the children have created and have an art gallery tour wherby all children get to view the work across school. This is one of the most enjoyable weeks of the year and we are very proud to say our work has also been chosen to be displayed in the National Gallery itself on many occasions. Below is the PowerPoint detailing our most recent successful National Gallery submission.