Art and Design
Art Leader: Jo Sears
Implementation
On entering the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) children are given opportunities to engage with the arts, enabling them to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials. Using Developmental Matters (July 2021), art activities are planned to ensure children are continually focused on working towards meeting the goals set out in the 'Expressive art and design' section of the Development Matters document (section 10). Continuous provision is also provided in the EYFS setting in the form of a painting area and a collage area.
Our school's art and design curriculum follows a progressive long term plan that focuses on skills from Year 1 to Year 6, helping pupils' become proficient in drawing, painting, sculpting techniques and other skills. The curriculum seeks to build on knowledge and skills over a two-year rolling curriculum (for KS1, LKS2 and UKS2).
Each unit of work has been structured to be integrated into a thematic approach, to effectively enhance and deepen the pupils' understanding of key historical, geographical or science concepts through connections to a class unit. Where appropriate, art and design units may be linked to the community or cultural issues to engage our artists in the world around them and to help understand the role they play as individuals.
Art and design is taught on a half termly basis, which alternates with DT. Our medium term plans follow an inspire, develop, create and evaluate approach and there are also opportunities to work collaboratively as a class, or in small groups, as well as individually .
Sketchbooks
At Summer Lane Primary School, each of our pupils have their own sketch books to document their personal journey for each unit of work, where they can record their feelings, thoughts and ideas; practice new techniques and to further refine their skills. These sketchbooks give our pupils the opportunity to study an existing piece of art or artist; create a constructive and reflective critique of this work and to use these ideas to develop their own piece of related art work. Artists from different eras and nationalities are studied throughout school to give our pupils a balanced understanding of art concepts and skills.
Enrichment
Visits from artists or visits to local galleries are planned into the curriculum, or are taken advantage of as the opportunities arise. These visitors and visits are designed to enrich and inspire the art process and for pupils to make wider links to their art units and to art and design in society. We often visit exhibitions and participate in workshops at the Cooper Art Gallery, Experience Barnsley and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, whom we have good links with. We also enjoy working with our local community.
- February 2022 - Barnsley Hospital contacted us in the hope we would be able to bring some good cheer to the walls of the Pathology Lab after the pandemic and of course we said yes. Art work of children's work on Henri Rousseau were hung along the corridors and the staffroom, and we later added further artwork during Her Majesty's Jubilee celebrations in June 2022.
- Pupils and parents in Nursery visited the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to partake in 'Going on A Bear Hunt' as linked to their topic on Woodlands. For many, this would have been the first time they encountered sculptures on such a giant scale.
- September 2021 - Pupils in F2 visited the Cooper Art Gallery to view an exhibition on the colourful illustrations of David McKee from 'Elmer the Patchwork Elephant'. They returned to class and created their own elephant designs.
- October 2020 - Year 6 were approached by Barnsley Council to create a short video to commemorate Remembrance Day during the COVID-19 pandemic when people were unable to gather. Instead, videos from throughout different community groups were streamed online to unite our local community. We shared our artwork of fallen soldiers as we read aloud a poem.
- March 2020 - In order to pay tribute to the NHS for all their hard work during the pandemic, the key worker children created a banner for our NHS heroes, which we hung outside our school, directly across from Barnsley Hospital.
Art is embraced throughout school with focused theme days being organised where classes can explore, express and create a piece of art work individually or collaboratively.
- October 2023 - Back in 2016, 10 local primary schools were asked to be involved in an art installation to commemorate the 100 years centenary of the Battle of the Somme, where on the first day of the battle 300 'Barnsley Pals' sadly lost their lives. We were one of the original schools but sadly over this summer there was irreparable damage to the original art installation. In October all of our KS2 pupils were given the opportunity to work with artists Neil Musson and Jono Retallick to restore this historic memorial once more. A workshop was also organised after school for the wider community to attend. During the workshops the artists worked with them to create a design which they then would create from display. The theme of the medal design was to imagine what they would take with them to battle to remind them of home. We were very grateful to other staff members, parents with younger pupils and so of our ex-pupils returning to help us and be part of this local history art installation. Their work will be on public display in Barnsley town centre.
- November 2022 - Ten of our pupils, across KS1 and KS2, were entered into the Barnsley Rotary Art Exhibition at the Metrodome, where their artwork was displayed and judged by re-owned local artist Ashley Jackson.
- June 2022 - We celebrated 'Access all Art' with Sky Arts where we joined them on a week-long creative journey through the arts which encompassed sounds (music), marks (art), words (literacy), images (ICT) and moves (dance). We came off timetable, spending a day on each area discovering, exploring and making within the umbrella of 'the Arts'.
- September 2021 - Classes celebrated Roald Dahl Day and were asked to create a piece of artwork inspired by readings about Dahl's characters, events in a story or his settings. A wide range of skills and materials were seen as children took inspiration from these readings.
- September 2020 - Space week allowed classes to experiment with different mediums and create space inspired pieces of art work.
Light Lines art workshop with artists Neil and Jono
Access all Arts - Sky Arts Weeks
Barnsley Hospital - Raising their spirits
Art across school 2022-2023
F2's visit to the Cooper Art Gallery & class activities
Remembrance Day
NHS banner
Art across school 2020-2021
Impact
The impact of our art and design curriculum can be seen not only in our children's sketchbooks but through our displays and school environment. We measure the impact of our art and design curriculum through various forms:
- Discussions with the children about their knowledge of artists and concepts
- Looking at the quality of the pupils' sketchbooks and final outcome.
- Children in the Foundation Stage are assessed within the Expressive Arts and Design strand of the Development Matters document.