At Hindley Junior and Infant School, we are committed to providing all children with learning opportunities to engage in Art and Design. As a school, we believe that Art is a vital and integral part of children’s education. It provides them with opportunities to develop a range of ways in which they can share and express their individual creativity, whilst learning about and making links with a wide spectrum of different types of art in our society. The purpose of Art and Design education is to give children the skills, concepts, knowledge and understanding necessary for them to express their responses to ideas and experiences in a visual or tactile form. It fires their imagination and is a fundamental means of personal expression. While it is essentially a practical subject, Art and Design at Hindley Junior and Infant School will provide opportunities for reflection and children will have the ability to make informed, critical, and respectful responses to their own work and that of others.

The national curriculum for Art and Design aims to ensure that all children:

• produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences.
• become proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques.
• evaluate and analyse creative works using the language of art, craft and design.
• know about great artists, craft makers and designers, and understand the historical and cultural development of their art forms.

Reception

Children will safely use and explore a variety of materials, tools and techniques, experimenting with colour, design, texture, form and function. They will share their creations, explaining the process they have used. Children will use a range of small tools, including pencils, scissors and paint brushes. They will be encouraged to show accuracy and care when drawing.

The national curriculum for Art and Design aims to ensure that all children should be taught:

Key Stage 1

• to use a range of materials creatively to design and make products.
• to use drawing, painting and sculpture to develop and share their ideas, experiences and imagination.
• to develop a wide range of art and design techniques in using colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space.
• about the work of a range of artists, craft makers and designers, describing the differences and similarities between different practices and disciplines, and making links to their own work.

Key stage 2
Children should be taught to develop their techniques, including their control and their use of materials, with creativity, experimentation, and an increasing awareness of different kinds of art, craft and design.
Children should be taught:

• to create sketch books to record their observations and use them to review and revisit ideas
• to improve their mastery of art and design techniques, including drawing, painting and sculpture with a range of materials [for example, pencil, charcoal, paint, clay]
• about great artists, architects and designers in history.

Implementation

Research suggests that Art and Design is one of primary-aged children’s favourite subjects and we believe it to be a crucial part of school life and learning.  At Hindley Junior and Infant School, we implement Art and Design through the use of well planned, progressive lessons which focuson building the children’s skills, knowledge and understanding of the subject. These skills are built upon as the children go through school with teachers making explicit links to previously learnt skills and knowledge. These lessons are implemented on a weekly basis in a fun, creative and engaging way which provide the children with a wealth of knowledge about an artist. This then provides the children with the opportunity to use the progressive skills they have learnt to create their own piece of artwork, taking inspiration from the artist studied whilst also being ambitious with their own design ideas too. We have carefully chosen artists based on our locality for each year group to take inspiration from, such as L.S.Lowry and Liverpool Cathedral, to ensure that our Art curriculum is personalised and relevant to the children at our school. The artists chosen will also allow the children to explore artwork from different countries and cultures. The evidence of their work is collected within their art sketch book which follows the children through the school. Photographs of larger, group or 3D pieces are also kept within this book.

Children will have clear understanding of skills and artists studied, show enjoyment and have confidence in their abilities in Art and Design. The large majority of children will achieve age related expectations in Art and Design with progress closely monitored through the use of our knowledge and skills progression document. At Hindley Junior and Infant School, children will have a passion for creating pieces of art using their skills learnt, they will be able to express their creativity in many different ways using skills that will be transferable across different areas of the curriculum and their home life too.