Art Curriculum Intent

At Radcliffe on Trent Junior school, we intend to deliver a high quality art curriculum, which will motivate, inspire and challenge our pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art. Our intent is for our children to be equipped with the skills to be creative and use their imagination. They will enjoy art through varied mediums and express how they feel about different aspects of art using relevant vocabulary to explain their reasons.

Connecting with learning:

Art is a form of expression and our children will have many opportunities to develop and extend skills with a great opportunity to share and celebrate their individual interests and ideas. We pride ourselves on progressively teaching our children relevant vocabulary and using metacognitive approaches for the learning to stick and remember important pieces over time. Our whole school creative art days (themed to link with PSHE or diversity for example) are also great platforms to learn art collaboratively and make the leaning memorable.

We aim to give all children the confidence to express themselves through a range of chosen art forms: drawing, colour, texture, sculpture, textiles and collage, and pupils are encouraged to experiment with a range of different materials and techniques to bring their ideas to life. Opportunities to practise art and design techniques when using colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space are embedded across the Art curriculum through the use of individual sketchbooks which move with the children through school so they can also see their art progress develop.

Connecting with others:

Additionally, we want our children to know how Art & Design has contributed to our culture and understanding of our history and the world. Our children will focus on a variety of famous artists, architects and designers, for example William Morris in lower school and Frida Kahlo in upper school. Most of our influential artist work will be linked to our year group topics to ensure that learning is as purposeful and cross-curricular as possible. Our children will have opportunities to take inspiration from these key artists and create their own artworks in their particular styles, embracing our whole school ‘Be Unique’ value well.

Connecting with our community:

Our curriculum allows our children to explore British art and design and make comparisons between then and now and also between different communities around the world. We have studied local artists in the past such as Michelle Reader and Belinda Poon and our local area is also used as much as possible when looking at natural colour and texture, for example our new nature garden, the River Trent and Radcliffe cliffs. Our after school art club brings different children together from across the school to meet and share artistic skills. Historically we have created mosaic art work linked to the Radcliffe on Trent railway station with the community rail partnership and more recently art and photo competitions linked to the natural environment we live in partnership with the Vale of Belvoir Rotary Club.