We are aspiring artists!

At Southville Primary School, we aspire to be artists. Our art curriculum will give each child the opportunity to cultivate their creative potential in a nurturing and supportive environment. We will introduce the children to a broad range of artists, architects and designers, both contemporary and historic. We will teach them to draw on the skills and knowledge of local, national and international artists and designers in order to enrich their work and play an active role in their creative community.

We will do this by:

• Making sure that art objectives are delivered in the context of an appropriate topic within our Immersive Learning curriculum wherever possible
• Ensuring the children experience a range of mediums, techniques and styles
• Developing and improving the children’s mastery of art and design techniques within and across the years
• Giving the children the freedom to express their own views in order to critique and appreciate various artists and their work
• Providing our children with opportunities to share and present art and design work that they are proud of
• Organising visits to local art galleries and museums, as well as events such as parent visits and The Southbank Bristol Arts Trail, to allow our children to experience first-hand learning opportunities within their local environment.

Implementation

The teaching and learning of art is taught as part of our immersive curriculum and in line with the requirements of the National Curriculum. For each year group, at least one unit of study is driven and led by art and design. Knowledge is also taught, reinforced and recapped during other units of study, when elements of art and DT are fed in where appropriate. Art and design may include studies of movements, periods and individuals as well as architecture, photography, sculpture, crafts and product design. Children learn from and about artists and designers.

In art, we organise learning into three main objectives:

• To develop ideas
• To master techniques
• To take inspiration from the greats

Year teams plan and assess lessons using progression grids to ensure progression within and across year groups so that it is clear how, for example, children develop their use of tone when sketching progressively from year 1 up to year 6. 

Children complete their work in their immersive books or in their ‘progression sketch books’. Two sketch lessons per year go into the ‘progression sketch books’, which follow the children up the school from Year 1 to Year 6. Children also have opportunities to display and celebrate their artwork, being ‘real artists’. This includes in school but also part of community projects such as the ‘Lantern Parade’ and the ‘Arts Trail’. Local artists are invited into school and, in some cases, are studied.