Our art curriculum is directly anchored to our six Big Ideas, which act as conceptual threads that give all pupils—especially our most vulnerable—a meaningful way to build vocabulary, express their voices, and connect their learning across subjects:
🕊️ Peace & Freedom: Art offers a vital outlet for emotional literacy. In Year 1 painting, children explore cold and warm colors to reflect moods linked to citizenship texts, while Year 2 explores color, shape, and pattern in Kandinsky’s abstract art to observe how color relates to our inner feelings and environment.
⚖️ Equity & Social Justice: Children discover how artists use their work to challenge power and campaign for fairness. In Year 1, children explore identity and equity by creating digital portraits of Martin Luther King Jr., while Year 3 explores abstract expressionism through trailblazing artists like Janet Sobel and Frank Bowling.
🤝 Diversity & Identity: Art is deeply personal and reflects who we are. Children study self-portraits using mirrors in Year 2 to paint themselves in the style of Frida Kahlo. Our curriculum explicitly celebrates global diversity by exploring Aboriginal water art, African-American visual art from the Harlem Renaissance, and modern diverse sculptors like Yumiko Goto and Kehinde Wiley.
🗳️ Participation & Citizenship: Through collaborative art projects, children learn the value of community. In Year 6, children study L.S. Lowry and David Hepher to analyze how cityscapes, high-rise flats, and shared urban spaces reflect the collective lives and citizenship of the people who inhabit them.
🌍 Sustainability & Environment: This thread teaches children to look at environmental responsibility. In Year 4 painting, children analyze climate change by creating watercolor pieces featuring opposing color palettes inspired by Jill Pelto. In Year 6, children practice a sustainable "make do and mend" approach by exploring textiles and changing fabrics through knotting, tearing, and sewing.
🍎 Health & Wellbeing: Creating art is deeply connected to mental health and emotional regulation. Our curriculum links directly to physical earth systems to bring stability and wonder to our pupils. In Year 3, children process the concept of natural disasters by using flicking techniques and dramatic brushstrokes to paint volcanic explosions.