Art and Design

What does Art look like at Vicarage Park School?

The Aims of Our Art Curriculum:

We want to our children to:

• Have a ‘can do’ attitude towards art.
• Take pride in their work and enjoy sharing it with others.
• Explore their ideas, record their experiences and experiment with techniques using a sketchbook.
• Produce creative pieces, feeling confident in their skills when exploring different art processes and when using a range of medium.
• Talk confidently about their own and others artwork using the language of art.
• Recognise a range of artists, crafts people and designers, past and present, male and female, locally and globally, and across a range of cultures.

The Impact of Our Art Curriculum:

Art challenges and encourages our children to develop their resilience and ability to express themselves. While developing their creativity and imagination, art also aids the development of fine motor skills, language skills, reading, writing and decision making. At Vicarage Park we encourage our children to share their ideas, experiences and imagination so they can work towards developing their own unique style. Through experimentation our children will become confident applying art processes and using a range of materials. They will become more aware of other artists’ work, their impact, cultural development and historical influences. They will also share their own opinions of art and evaluate and analyse their own creations. 

Our school’s cross-curricular approach to learning ensures that our art topics are relevant to the history, geography or RE units that the children are studying at the time. This results in them gaining an appreciation for how art styles differ based on time period and locality. 

Our children feel proud of their art creations and to encourage this sense of achievement we ensure they are given regular opportunities to share their artwork with others, whether this be through creating school displays, topic book covers or posts on our school website and social media pages.

How We Deliver Our Art Curriculum:

At Vicarage Park, the six art processes (drawing, painting, collage, printmaking, textiles and sculpture) are taught over a two year period, allowing each class teacher to cover a unit of work once every term. Within each of these processes, the children will explore different techniques using the visual elements of colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space. A clear progressive plan throughout the year groups provides a consistent teaching approach across the school, ensuring that each time a process is revisited, our children’s skills, knowledge and art vocabulary are being developed. During EYFS the children will be introduced to a variety of the processes in varying depth and during continuous provision. 

During each unit of work, the class teacher will introduce the children to an artist or a piece of artwork to contemplate and inspire, looking at the skills the artist has used. They will then be given the opportunity to mimic this style and develop their own skills, ensuring they are able to use the medium with confidence before planning and designing their own artwork. During this stage, while their ideas are being developed, the children will work within their art sketchbooks, which follow them through the school and logs their whole school art journey. Once all the plans are in place, the children will have several sessions to create and make, applying all the knowledge and skills they developed in those initial lessons. Finally to finish the unit, the class will be given the opportunity to share their artwork and reflect on the finished piece as well as the designing and making process, using self and peer evaluations.

Throughout the year, shorter mini units of art and one-off art sessions will be done within other subjects or linked to seasonal topics e.g. Christmas cards, calendars. These sessions are also used as opportunities to cover the six art processes and develop the children’s skills, confidence and creativity.

Whenever possible, teachers plan in visits to art galleries and arrange opportunities for the children to work in collaboration with artists, crafts people and designers to inspire and challenge their thinking.