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Art & Design

The Art & Design curriculum aims to stimulate creativity, develop visual communication skills and allow learners to experiment with different mediums and explore the arts through textiles, graphic design and fine art. This range of endorsements offers KS3 students opportunities to explore a wide variety of skills that opens up more options for learners at KS4.

All schemes of work are devised to expand practical and fine motor skills whilst familiarising learners with the four assessment objectives (below) that become fundamental at GCSE level and beyond. We strive to include a broad and exciting range of artists and designers with the aim of showing learners that there are many ways of communicating and recording ideas. We encourage extensive experimentation so learners can begin to identify and develop their own artistic voice and our specialist teachers model techniques and provide exemplars to support and inspire learners. In KS4, external artists are invited to run workshops to enhance learning and a visit to London provides a strong foundation for the second unit of coursework. KS5 offers further opportunities to develop creative and critical thinking, independent work and presenting ideas in a lively and stimulating way. Many areas within our curriculum are not confined to Art & Design but are relevant to different areas of working life so learners are able to develop a comprehensive range of transferable skills.

Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.
Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops.
Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress.
Present a personal and meaningful response that realises intentions and, where appropriate, makes connections between visual and other elements.

Cognition and metacognition principles are addressed within our curriculum to embed key skills and scaffold the process of designing an independent and personal final outcome at the end of each project. Developing a deeper understanding of design processes and the assessment objectives can enable leaners to access higher descriptors on the exam board’s taxonomy and achieve higher levels of attainment.