Art and Design
Art and Design Lead - Mrs R Whittaker
“Art and design is the freedom of the individual, the freedom of expression and the freedom to fail without retort.” - Simon Waterfall
“Art develops spiritual values and contributes a wider understanding to the experience of life, which helps build a balanced personality.” - Bridgit Riley
“Art and design isn’t a just subject to learn, but an activity you can practise: with your hands, your eyes, your whole personality.” - Quentin Blake
Art, craft and design embody some of the highest forms of human creativity. A high-quality art and design education should engage, inspire and challenge pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design. As pupils progress, they should be able to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of art and design. They should also know how art and design both reflect and shape our history, and contribute to the culture, creativity and wealth of our nation.
National Curriculum 2013
Aims
We can inspire our children to be creative, independent, have freedom of expression and interpretation of what their own “art” is. There is no “wrong” way to create art, and children should not feel their work has to look a certain way. Celebrate difference and individuality.
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
National Curriculum 2013
Art and Design Programmes of Study: Key Stages 1 and 2
At Laughton, art is a carefully planned and progressive part of the curriculum, ensuring that children develop a strong foundation in a range of artistic disciplines. Each year, pupils are taught three different art forms, selected from drawing, painting, collage, printing, and sculpture. Over the course of their school career, each child will complete eight projects in drawing, eight in painting, and eight in a combination of collage, printing, and sculpture.
Drawing and painting are taught every year to ensure continuity and skill progression, with a strong focus on tone and technique. Children have regular opportunities to apply and reinforce their learning by creating portrait drawings for Mother's Day and Father's Day, and painting festive artworks for Christmas and Easter cards. This consistent practice supports memory retention, skill development, and a deepening understanding of the artistic process.
Our art curriculum aims to achieve the following for our children:
Develop Fine Motor Skills: Focus on enhancing fine motor skills to improve handwriting and overall dexterity, particularly following the pandemic.
Enhance Observation Skills: Encourage pupils to notice finer details by teaching them to observe closely. This skill will help them notice patterns in mathematics and notice vocabulary through literature.
Promote Self-Control: Foster self-regulation and concentration by encouraging pupils to engage deeply with their art projects, moving beyond the impulse to finish quickly.
Encourage Risk-Taking: Teach pupils to embrace mistakes as part of the creative process. By learning to rectify errors and problem-solve, they will develop resilience and adaptability.
Instil a Sense of Pride: Cultivate a sense of pride in their work, aiming for creations that are worthy of display and celebration.
Expand Vocabulary: Develop an understanding of artistic concepts, such as tone, to enhance comprehension across subjects, including writing and music.
Our Drawing Curriculum
At Laughton, drawing is taught progressively across all year groups. All children regularly practise drawing skills. Each year group focuses on the element of art: tone. Children are taught to observe areas of light and dark in images. Teachers often photocopy images in monochrome to help children compare tones and make decisions about pattern, space, and pencil pressure. Every child illustrates or “publishes” three pieces of writing per year. All children draw a portrait of someone special for both Mother’s Day and Father’s Day to practise and develop their skills throughout the year.
Pencil Dictionaries
At Laughton, every child has a pencil dictionary. They are taught how to use them purposefully and skillfully. Pencil dictionaries engage our children in more frequent and purposeful doodling. They develop pupil's fine motor skills and pencil control. Children create pencil dictionaries at home, making the resource easily accessible. All you need is a pencil or pen, and paper! Children can then use their dictionaries as a reference when they need to add tone to their drawings. The pencil dictionaries are made up of a range of shapes in different sizes, using different pressure, and with different spaces between. Staff also use pencil dictionary activities as calming and focused tasks during transition times.
Our Painting Curriculum
At Laughton, painting is taught progressively across all year groups. We have chosen to only use powder paint so the children become skilled in this medium. All children regularly practise painting skills. Along with a term-long painting unit, all children paint a Christmas and Easter card, to practise and develop their painting skills throughout the year. Each year group focuses on the element of art: tone.
Sketchbooks
Our sketchbooks are the main body of evidence for our children’s projects from Year 1 to Year 6. Sketchbooks have been an essential part of the creative process for artists of all disciplines, ranging from textiles and jewellery to interior design, printmaking and ceramics. It is a complete record of the creative process which, it can even be argued, is more important than the finished object at the end of this process.
When we display the children’s finished pieces, the sketchbooks will also play an integral part to show the children’s development of skills and knowledge and their journey towards the final piece and they themselves can be displayed alongside or on a surface below the display etc. We want the children to be proud of them, and want to share with others their ideas and creativity, as they arguably are a work of art in themselves.
The sketchbook for each project will show evidence of:
- Gathering inspiration
- Exploring art media
- Developing understanding
- Recording responses
- Reviewing artwork
- Making modifications
- Evaluating
They will contain not just sketches but different media such as pictures from magazines, postcards, cuttings, artefacts eg pressed leaves, notes, copies of famous works and information about artists being studied too. It will include the children’s thoughts about their work, comparisons to artists and experiments with colour mixing, printing samples, or collage materials etc. Opening the sketchbooks will be like opening the door to an Aladdin’s cave of creativity!
Gomersal School in West Yorkshire show their use of sketchbooks https://www.tts-group.co.uk/blog/2017/08/08/use-sketchbooks-gomersal-primary-school.html
Aims and ambitions for Art and Design:
Our aim is for all pupils to:
- Produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences
- Become experts in drawing and painting
- Become proficient in sculpture, textiles, printing 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.
Art and Design in EYFS
EYFS Development Matters 2023: Expressive Arts and Design
3 and 4-years-olds will be learning to:
- Create closed shapes with continuous lines and begin to use these shapes to represent objects.
- Draw with increasing complexity and detail, such as representing a face with a circle and including details.
- Use drawing to represent ideas like movement or loud noises.
- Show different emotions in their drawings and paintings, like happiness, sadness, fear, etc.
- Explore colour and colour mixing.
Children in reception will be learning to:
- Explore, use and refine a variety of artistic effects to express their ideas and feelings.
- Return to and build on their previous learning, refining ideas and developing their ability to represent them.
- Create collaboratively, sharing ideas, resources and skills.
Art and Design in Key Stage 1
Children will 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. With a focus on tone.
- 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.
Art and Design in Key Stage 2
Children will 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
- 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 printing with a range of materials [for example, pencil, charcoal, paint, lino]
- About great artists, architects and designers in history.
Knowledge in Art and Design
Knowledge is broken down into two main types:
- Substantive knowledge: knowing about the technical and wider elements of Art and Design, including knowledge of famous artists and their styles.
- Disciplinary knowledge: knowing how to apply this knowledge in practice to control techniques and create art through different mediums.
Further information about the substantive and disciplinary knowledge that we teach at Laughton All Saints' can be seen below on the progression documents.
How have we designed our curriculum?
We have crafted, designed and structured our own curriculum to allow children to made good progress throughout their primary education. Our curriculum suits the progressive needs of our school, which sets out the aims and programmes of study for Art ensuring that our curriculum coverage is consistent across key stages, whilst also ensuring that disciplinary knowledge is built upon each year. Teachers are able to support pupils in developing their own knowledge and understanding about Art, resulting in them being able to make appropriate links to learning within the community and throughout their lives.
Click here to view the overview of our curriculum:
Click here to view our progression documents: