Intent 

At Southroyd, our vision to create active citizens is embedded into our Art curriculum. We deliver a varied curriculum that engages and challenges children across an array of skills which they can take with them to secondary school and beyond.  

Our children are taught about a broad range of artists, sculptors and designers. We ensure that when doing this, we display a mixture of ages, races, nationalities, backgrounds, localities and styles. By visiting local museums and galleries, the children are exposed to real-life examples and are given the opportunity to get up close and personal with Art in all its many forms. We hope that by doing this, our children are inspired and believe that they can achieve in the creative field, should that be the life path they choose.   

Our aim is to ensure that all children have the opportunity to: 

- 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. 

Year 6 working with the Burley Banksy - inspired from his skills to develop their own art installations for Spirit Alive.

Guests from Gelli Printing come and share a workshop in Year 2.

Implementation 

Each year group studies a variety of art topics, artists and media. Often these link to what the children are studying in other areas of the curriculum to help with their learning journeys and to make each topic more meaningful for them too.  

Our curriculum has been carefully planned to ensure progression of skills in drawing, painting, 3D art, textiles and collage across the year groups. Children are able to build on prior knowledge and apply new ideas to their basic skills as they move through school with increasing levels of knowledge. Our children are encouraged to be creative and imaginative – we do not want, or expect, every child’s piece of art to look the same. We introduce the children to a wide range of media so that they can make informed choices about techniques and materials in their art compositions. 

Each child is given a sketch book, which follows them through school, showing their individual journey as an artist. This also helps them to recall learning, media and techniques that they have used previously in lower down year groups. Sketch books are used to develop ideas, experiment, practice and refine skills, as well as to display some finished pieces of art.  

Children's illustrator Pete Williamson, who works with the Stitch Head series of books, visits school and after sharing an inspiring assembly, ran workshops in school for budding illustrators.