ART
The aim of the Art curriculum at GSSC is to give our young people the opportunity to learn the sticky knowledge that will enable them to become lifelong creative thinkers, to explore and use different medias in an exciting and creative way. To then use these practical skills to observe themselves and the world around them, developing the knowledge necessary to question and evaluate. The art curriculum also enables our young people to explore their own and others art. They are supported to do this through experiencing art, developing their art language, analysing and comparing art and critiquing their own and others art. Students are enabled to explore different ways of viewing and displaying art such as through sketchbooks, creating a gallery etc. At KS4 and KS5 our young people apply these skills to work towards accredited qualifications.
At GSSC our young people follow a progressive Art curriculum which is taught alongside DT over a term. The curriculum has three artistic principles threaded throughout it across the year: Practical elements: art skills, media processes and techniques and formal elements (line, tone, form, shape, colour, pattern, texture); Theoretical elements: cultural and contextual content, learning about artists and artwork and Disciplinary elements: how aesthetic judgements are formed and claimed, how art is studied and how to participate in the discourses of artists, scholars and critics.
The progressive Art Curriculum is broken down into three composite areas of study: Drawing and Printing, Painting and mixed media and sculpture and 3D.
Each area of study teaches our young people to first experience, then explore and finally to develop an understanding of different mediums: drawing and printing, painting and mixed media and sculpture and 3D. The curriculum also encourages our young people to observe, describe then later to evaluate the differences and similarities between the art practises, share their opinion on their outcomes, aspiring to apply this to their own practise when creating their own work.
Through the curriculum, our young people learn how to explore the discipline of art; how they and others express their ideas. initially they will learn how to make autonomous marks, developing into the use a sketchbook, then later they will learn how to record ideas in a variety of ways including annotation, mood boards etc.
At GSSC our Art curriculum is structured and designed to enable our young people to explore and experience both themselves and the world around them through the medium of art. The three artistic principles are revisited throughout the three different areas of study and over the course of KS3 and KS4 to support pupils to progress. The Art curriculum, which was initially drawn from Kapow, meets all the national curriculum requirements and has been adapted by both myself as subject lead and subject teachers to ensure it is fully adapted and appropriate to the student’s needs. All students progress towards acquiring component knowledge and learning is tracked lesson by lesson and then assessed against composites at the end of the term. To ensure rigour and fidelity to the subject, book scrutiny and staff training will take place; this will ensure our curriculum supports students to develop at their pace whilst still remaining exciting and aspirational.