Earlham Primary School

• We believe that art ignites imagination and creativity, and  helps our pupils make sense of the world;

•  We want our art curriculum to engage, inspire and challenge pupils, and give them the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art;

• We follow the national curriculum. Learning is sequenced to build on previous units of learning to develop skills, knowledge and understanding;

• Pupils are encouraged to develop their skills through a do / reflect / do again cycle, using their critical thinking skills to evaluate and improve their art work to develop their confidence and resilience. We want the children to become risk takers, learn from their mistakes and foster their passions;

• We know that our children do not access the amazing art offer in London, and we have designed a curriculum that exposes children to a wide variety of art forms, techniques, processes and media, including educational visits, performances, exhibitions and concerts, as well as performances in school;

• All our KS2 pupils visit an art gallery each year; as well as exploring art works to understand technique, we develop visual literacy by encouraging the children to explore a work of art as they would a text, to ‘read’ the stories being told, and to understand the role of art as a historical source;

• We host a visiting artist in school each year, so the children work alongside the artist and can share, discuss and question their motivation, inspiration and techniques;

• Each year group will study and produce portraits to revisit their understanding of this key genre and develop their skills;

• Wellbeing and mental health are very important to us, and we believe creative arts help children to become resilient learners. Staff are encouraged to develop their own practice and support the learning process for pupils; 

• Our pupils have told us they would like further opportunities to work within digital media, and to explore ‘selfies’ and street art as forms of self- and social expression, and these are now part of our curriculum offer;

• Earlham is currently working towards being recognised by the Arts Council for Artsmark. This will recognise the high quality and range of our arts provision.

Covid adaptations to our art curriculum: To ensure the safety of the children and maintain hygiene, our revised timetable limits the duration of Art lessons. Art will take place once every term and include shorter lessons. Autumn term focused heavily on drawing techniques which ensured good progress and an opportunity to assess children's use and control of a sketching pencil after a long period of remote learning in the initial lockdown. The spring and summer terms will provide opportunities to take Art further in the use of a range of media and materials whilst still adhering to our Covid safe protocols. Hopefully, we will be able to utilise resources that can be wiped easily (e.g squeegees for screen printing) or recycle materials (e.g cardboard cutouts to mix paints). Our previous curriculum has enriched the children in terms of visiting galleries and museums, however due to the current lockdown and the pandemic this will not be possible. Instead, using virtual tours of the galleries will be more feasible when exploring artworks.