Intent    

• To deliver a broad, balanced and ambitious art curriculum that meets the aims of the National Curriculum while ensuring access and achievement for every child.

• To inspire creativity and imagination, enabling pupils to express their own ideas, experiences and individuality through a range of media and techniques.

• To nurture confidence and resilience, encouraging children to take creative risks and experiment 

• To develop technical skills and knowledge progressively, building upon prior learning and deepening understanding through revisiting and refining techniques.

• To foster critical thinking by giving pupils opportunities to discuss, evaluate and reflect upon their own work and that of others using appropriate artistic vocabulary.

• To build cultural capital by exposing children to a diverse range of artists, craft makers and designers—both historical and contemporary—celebrating creativity from different cultures, genders and backgrounds.

• To help pupils understand the role of art and design in shaping culture, history and society, and its continuing importance in the modern world.

Implementation

At Whitley Park, we strive to deliver an ambitious art and design curriculum, ensuring coverage of the aims and targets of the National Curriculum, whilst securing access and achievement for all of our students. Our curriculum enables students to express creatively their original ideas and personal experiences. Students produce their own works of art, craft and design, and have continual opportunities for progression without fear of mistakes. Self-expression is widely recognised as playing a vital role in maintaining good mental health, and therefore the Whitley Park curriculum promotes art as a valuable creative outlet. Students are engaged, inspired and challenged through varied and rich experiences that develop skills, knowledge and, in turn, cultural capital for every child. We encourage students to take creative risks through experimentation and innovation of learnt techniques and skills. The balance between breadth and depth is key to our curriculum; it is important that our students be introduced to a wide range of skills with different media, but also that these are revisited and skills developed progressively, both in isolation and in context of thematic topics and artists. Likewise, study of artists, craft makers and designers is balanced between the historical greats and contemporary and diverse artists, in order to promote aspiration and self-belief for all of our students, regardless of gender, socio-economic, cultural or ethnic background. Students explore the impact of art and design on culture and creativity, and how this has shaped our nation’s history and its place within the world. They have regular and progressive opportunities to engage critically with works of art and to evaluate their own work, developing use of technical vocabulary to communicate their thoughts accurately and specifically.

Please click on the links below to view our Years 1-6 Art and Design Curriculum Overviews.