WELSH HOUSE FARM COMMUNITY SCHOOL AND RESOURCE BASE
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Art & Design
Overview Statement
At Welsh House Farm Community School, we aim to develop every child’s creativity and artistic expression and appreciation of the arts through the teaching of a broad, imaginative art and design curriculum. We want our children to love art, craft and design! We want them to be unlimited in their ambitions, and to understand that they can grow up to work in the animation industry or be illustrators, graphic designers, fashion designers, architects or printmakers. Our art curriculum is designed to equip our children with the skills and knowledge that they need to understand and create art whilst stimulating, engaging and challenging them. We aim to inspire all pupils and develop their confidence to experiment and develop their own works of art. We are a fully inclusive school and our curriculum reflects the true variety of art and aims to inspire all pupils, regardless of their background or ability, to be brave and creative. We want our children to use the local area as inspiration, to learn from other cultures and to embrace diversity. As our pupils progress, we want them to gain a greater understanding of how art and design contributes to their history and to the culture, creativity, and wealth of the world. We aim to not only equip our children with the minimum statutory requirements of the Art and Design National Curriculum, but to nurture their talents and interests, to enable them to think critically, to express their thoughts and ideas about the world around them and to inspire them to appreciate the arts throughout their whole lives.
WHFCS is a Rights Respecting School.
"We have the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities"
Teaching in Key Stage 1 and 2 is based on the full Access Art Scheme. Access Art is the leading provider of digital resources for the visual arts for schools in the UK. It is a Registered Charity which provides inspiration, ideas and CPD for teachers. Our art is organised into half termly themed units. The whole school topics overview can be viewed in the Downloads section at the bottom of this page.
The teaching in each unit gives every child the opportunity to view and appraise the art of a wide variety of different artists, to make visual notes to support their understanding and to create their own pieces of work across the seven strands of drawing, painting, printing, collage, textiles, 3d sculpture and digital media. In Key Stage 1 and 2, Art is taught weekly, by class teachers, as an important part of the wider broad and balanced curriculum.
In Early Years Foundation Stage, the teaching of Art and Design follows the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage, alongside guidance from Development Matters and Birth to 5 Matters. Expressive arts and design is a specific learning area which encourages our youngest artists to create original responses, not just to copy or imitate existing artworks. It fosters imagination, curiosity, creativity, cognition, critical thinking and experimentation. Expressive arts and design is broken down into two aspects: ‘Being Creative with Materials’ and ‘Being Imaginative and Expressive’. The children in the foundation stage at WHF have daily access to the creative areas and develop their skills and imagination through child initiated learning.
All of our art teaching at Welsh House Farm is all underpinned by the National Curriculum for Art and Design:
"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 2014 – Art and Design Purpose of Study
Our school art work is celebrated through vibrant displays within classrooms and across the whole school. Each child also has an individual ‘Art and Design Profile’, which showcases the progression of their skills across the seven strands, from Year 1 through to Year 6. The children are encouraged to evaluate their own work and the work of others, progressively developing the confidence to voice their personal opinions about a range of art.
We hold whole school competitions to encourage our children to engage in creative projects outside school. The children are given the freedom to submit entries in a wide variety of forms, including 3D models, drawings, paintings – even puddings! Our competitions usually tie in with local or National events, such as the Coronation of King Charles III.
Also, whilst at Welsh House Farm, our children are given the opportunity to work with professional artists and to view works of art in the wider world. The school enjoys being involved in arts based community projects such as working with the ‘Big Local’, where the children work with artists to create works of art for the carnival procession around the Welsh House Farm estate.
“Art is not just a subject to learn, but an activity that you can practise with your hands, your eyes, your whole personality,” Quentin Blake
