Discovering the Artist Within
At Mill Lane, we value Art and Design as a crucial part of the children’s entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum. Art and Design provides children with the opportunities to develop and extend skills and an opportunity to express their individual interests, thoughts and ideas. It enables children to express themselves in a creative, imaginative manner and through exploration. As pupils progress, they should be able to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of art and design.
The children will be taught Art and Design as part of their termly topic work. The work of famous national and international artists is explored to enhance the children’s learning.
Children will become creative learners, who have a knowledge about the great artists of the world. Creativity will be celebrated, and children will become able to edit and improve the pieces they have created. Children will be able to explore art using their imagination and will have developed the key art and design skills needed to allow them to produce creative and imaginative pieces of art.
The art curriculum contributes to children’s personal development in creativity, independence, judgement and self-reflection. Creating and designing pieces of art can sometimes be a moving and even spiritual experience. Children are encouraged to reflect on the important effect that art has on people’s moods, senses and quality of life. Children have the opportunity to encounter art from many cultures and, through their growing knowledge and understanding of art, they develop more positive attitudes towards other cultures and societies.
Art within Mill Lane's Classrooms
At Mill Lane we strongly believe in art as a process, not just as a means of producing a final piece of artwork. Children's classroom experiences will focus strongly on developing and honing skills: the intricacies of pencil shading, mixing paints or manipulating clay, for example. As children progress through the years, they will revisit a wide range of mediums, each time building on their previous learning through a clearly defined progression of skills. Three core elements are built into all aspects of our curriculum. These are:
- Generating and Developing Ideas, where pupils plan, develop and inform their ideas. In Key Stage 2, pupils do this through the use of sketchbooks, which allows them to refine their ideas and also reflect on the artistic process once their work is finished.
- Making - the process of developing a piece of artwork, experiencing a wide range of art materials in carefully planned, progressive units of work.
- Appreciating - where pupils learn to evaluate and analyse artwork - both their own and that of others, including famous artists - using the language of art. Pupils are encouraged to develop creative and critical thinking with the hope that they will be able to make reasoned evaluations of their own work, and that of others.
