“I love art, you can never be wrong and I get to draw and paint things that are in my head that I like and even if it’s not exactly what I thought, it doesn’t matter, I can change it.”
Creativity, exploration and innovation are hallmarks of high quality art. Mass producing a piece of art work that is identical to your friend’s one is not this so at Stockbridge, we’ve designed our art curriculum to inspire and educate children on great artists, designers and craft makers, past and present and from far and wide as well as encouraging them to explore different media. In doing this, we hope to allow children to develop their art skills sufficiently so that they produce work of their own style and to their own level.
Each child from Year 1 to Year 6 has their own personal sketch book which chronicles their art diet, from the early exploration of the artist, to their creative final piece. Working with artists from across the globe, we provide the children with the opportunity to discuss art directly with the artists, designers and craft makers, to see their studios and explore their original ideas and hopefully, become inspired!
Throughout the year, the whole schools takes one style eg. collage and develops their understanding and skill at this enabling us to exemplify progression and skill teachers up in different methods.
Children focus on different formal elements (line, shape, pattern, tone, colour, form and texture) within their art lessons to develop and build upon previously taught skills.
Drawing and Painting are the ‘golden thread’ of art and feature in each term’s learning as a foundation, with each art unit having a drawing and / or a painting focus (alongside another art skill), albeit using different media; charcoal, pencil, pastel, watercolour, ink etc. Each child will complete a colour mixing programme at the beginning of the academic year to build upon their understanding of colour which they will be able to draw upon in their own creative work.
Building upon the EYFS Expressive Art and Design area of learning, in the Lower School children continue to develop their control of line and directional colour or painting technique. They learn about colour mixing and apply this to different pieces of work.
In Year 1, sketch books are introduced to allow the children to be able to use them to link their understanding of the different skills they work on and how these can be applied. This sketch book follows children throughout their time in our school so that they can see and celebrate their growing skills and knowledge bank. They begin to learn about artists specifically with ‘five famous facts’ to learn about each artist.
In the Upper School, children take greater ownership for their sketch book allowing it to reflect them as growing artists. Within their art unit, the children practise their important drawing and painting skills before embarking on learning or enhancing other art techniques. They take an individual approach to the stimulus where no 2 pieces are the same.
Alongside this, children are given the opportunity to practice their art skills in secondary pieces through hooks across the curriculum. Drawing and painting still form the foundations of units but with greater focus on the secondary application of skills.
They meet designers and teachers use their professional skills to encourage children to think about the visual elements around us in life – to consider how are influences us and impacts on our health and wellbeing.