Art & Design

Art and Design

“Every child is and artist” Pablo Picasso.

At Ashcroft Primary Academy, we wish to equip children with the tools to aspire to become great artists.  At the start of this year, we come together as an academy and took part in a ‘Take One Picture’ project.  The aim of this project was to inspire a lifelong love of art and learning as well as settling children in with a familiar structure at the beginning of this academic year.  It also helped to increase our knowledge of famous artist and to become reflective artists ourselves. The project was a big success and we hoping to implement this project at the start of each academic year.  

We explore a wide range of skills and techniques throughout our Ash Croft lesson structure for art, working in collaboration with others along the way.  The children have access to a well-equipped art classroom where they are able to experiment with a selection of materials. We were very fortunate as every class in KS2 had an experienced Artist working with them for our first projects. As a school, we aim to provide the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of art by exploring various artists, sculptors and designers of both the past and present and understand the historical and cultural development of their art forms and their impact on culture and history.

Art is taught both explicitly, through focused studies of artists and art techniques, as well as by being carefully laced throughout our project work, creating meaningful cross curricular links. We also encourage our children to work collaboratively on art projects, which are shown proudly around our school.

As the children progress through school, art experiences are built upon so that our children can make decisions about their approach to different challenges, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design. Finally, we strive for every child to be able to express their feelings, opinions and emotions through many different forms of art with the ultimate aim that every child leaves our school family, as an imaginative, creative and inspired artist. Sketchbooks are used to keep a record of the creative process:  generating ideas, using key vocabulary, exploring ideas, skills practice, making, recording final pieces and evaluating.

Children experience many skills throughout our art lessons, which are repeated at a higher level as they move up starting from Early Years through to key stage 2, which ensures progression.  Importance is placed upon building the children’s awareness of a diverse range of famous artists and we encourage a range of verbal and written responses to artwork of varying forms.  We encourage our children to remain resilient throughout the art process and be a critical friend to both themselves and one another though carefully considered reflection.

Through all of these, our children are able to become ACE in Art and Design!