At Irlam Endowed, we believe that a creative education allows for children’s creativity and imagination to be stimulated, through a wide range of media, processes, designing and making, performance, composition and listening activities.  Knowledge and understanding will be extended in individual children and skills to express themselves visually will be developed.  Creativity is a basic component of the cultural, social, artistic and creative needs, of both the individual and society.

Please find our creative policy as a link below.  This will show how we integrate the teaching of art and the other creative subjects into our planning and teaching.

In EYFS, we plan our lessons using the objectives from Development Matters.  Objectives fall into two areas of learning: Physical Development and Expressive Arts and Design.  Objectives for Physical Development focus on motor skills and Expressive Arts objectives focus on creating with materials.  Throughout their time in EYFS, children will be given opportunities to develop the required skills through direct teaching in all subjects and continuous provision.

We plan our lessons using the National Curriculum objectives.  Below are the aims of the National Curriculum and the objectives set for KS1 and KS2.  At Irlam Endowed, we plan and teach a creative curriculum.  This enables teachers to link the artwork taught to work in History or Geography, for example.  Each half term, a year group will have a chosen artist that they will research in depth before practising skills linked to the National Curriculum objectives.  They will also produce a final piece of work relating to the artist they have been studying. 

Aims: The national curriculum for art and design aims to ensure that all pupils:

• 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.

Subject content:

Key stage 1

Pupils should be taught:

• 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

Pupils 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.

Pupils 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.

Recording: Pupils in KS1 and KS2 have sketch books: these are used by the children to show their development in skills using a range of media and techniques.  Each class also has a class art book which explains what has been taught and includes examples of research produced and final outcomes.

Display: At Irlam Endowed, display plays an important role within the classroom and school environment.  It is a tool for different styles of learning and it is a way of showing and appreciating children’s work.  Displays need to be of a high quality and clearly labelled to show that the work is respected.  Displays may be added to as the topic progresses or it may be a complete display that shows a variety of outcomes.  We have an art gallery wall in school where each class gets to display their artwork in frames for the whole school to see.