Art at Shakespeare Infant School

Intent

At Shakespeare Infant School we recognise the importance of developing an exciting, inspiring, creative curriculum that promotes imagination, thinking, innovation and a love of art, craft and design. We are passionate about providing experiences that all children can access which develop skills, knowledge, appreciation and enjoyment of art.  In line with the National Curriculum we believe that art 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’.   

Art at Shakespeare Infant School is experienced as part of our integrated curriculum.  We believe that this approach captivates children’s creativity as the works they produce are related to something familiar that they have been learning about and become intrigued by.   

Our Art planning offers ambitious opportunities for children to gain a number of different artistic skills from a range of different local artists. We encourage children to think deeply about the open ended possibilities of how they can present their artistic skills, for example, through paint, pastels, clay, pencils, chalk and many more. We promote a passion for accessible art, which will allow all children to be inspired by art that they encounter in the wider world and develop an appreciation for the wide variety of different mediums. We encourage children to appreciate the art they encounter and nurture the sense of awe and wonder.  We aim to equip our children with the skills and knowledge they need to develop their creative abilities as well as teaching the children about the history behind the art and artist we are studying.

Our inclusive Art planning focuses on the application of the artistic skills needed and the progression the children will make throughout the projects, leading to the end result. We encourage children to have passion in the making of art and the skilful steps needed to reach their final creations (painting, drawing, tracing, sculpture).

We understand that art is not solely focused on producing material but the skills and progression the children have gained and made during the making process.

We aim for the pupils at our school to leave us with a variety of artistic skills and knowledge, which will ensure they can continue to develop their creative abilities and skills for future learning. 

Our Art planning and lessons incorporate many of our schools learning values. Art allows the children to be creative learners just like Chrissy the caterpillar.  The children learn how to be independent like Billy the blackbird, through the progress they make and the knowledge they gain, they produce art that captures their own independent creativity. We encourage art to be open ended and the children’s own work, an example of this is in Year 1 the children paint dinosaurs in their project work but they need to be independent to choose what dinosaur they would like to make and why. Bertie Bee is a vital component of art learning, we expect our children to be active participants in their learning by posing and responding to thoughtful questions about what they are learning and their place in the world.