Vision

Our aim is to teach our pupils how to think and act like ‘creatives’. Using the disciplines of Art, Craft and Design we enable our pupils to engage both personal and global questions with creativity and confidence. In our safe and simulating environment, we will support our pupils to develop;

1. Their capacity to sustain creative investigation.
2. Their determination to master a range of ways of thinking and making.
3. Their resilience in overcoming difficulty.

In Art, Craft and Design we follow a spiral curriculum, one where key ways of thinking and understanding are repeated and reinforced year on year.  At the core of this is an understanding of the Creative Process, and all our projects and ways of working, from Years 7 to 13, engage with this.  To begin our students become familiar with and competent in the fundamental ways to prepare for a creative response i.e. observing and recording the world, finding out about the work of other creatives, and investigating ways of making art.  Then we teach them how to combine these three preparatory strands with their imagination and intuition to make a personal creative response, simultaneously strengthening their resilience over time, and their capacity to withstand the emotional ups and downs of making something original and of high quality.

Core Knowledge

Core knowledge to be learnt in Years 7, 8, 9, 10 and 12:

 In these foundational years we develop a specific set of generic Art, Craft and Design skills. These are sequenced with progressive levels of complexity and are in the areas of;

• Drawing
• Painting
• Use of a sketchbook
• Critical Understanding and Analysis
• Presentation and exhibition

Alongside this practical knowledge, and the over-arching understanding of the Creative Process each teacher will choose artists, processes and creative outcomes to match the needs of their classes and the individual students in them. Students are introduced to making in a variety of areas – ceramics, printmaking, photography, digital art, mixed media, and 3-D construction.

Clearly this is where diversity and inclusion of a range of artist role models can be facilitated (varying gender, race, age, disability and so forth). It is also where our curriculum can link effectively to careers in the visual arts sector.

Core knowledge to be learnt in Years 11 and 13:

In Years 11 and 13 our expectation is that students work as independent creatives, initiating and developing self-directed personal projects.  This degree of maturity is cultivated within projects during the other years of the curricular journey.

Photography

All that is outlined for Art, Craft and Design applies to our Photography Courses as well. The Creative Process remains the same.  The difference is in some of the generic subject knowledge pupils must develop. In Year 10 those specific to Photography are;

Core knowledge to be learnt in Year 10:

• How to use a digital SLR camera to create original images, understanding the basics of shutter speed, aperture, exposure and lenses.
• How to use a basic studio set up, and control lighting.
• How to edit their photographs using Photoshop Elements or equivalent.
• How to upload and store their images on Google Drive, and how to transfer files onto the school system for editing or for making presentations.
• How to present their work digitally using Powerpoint or equivalent.
• Generic skills for critical understanding and analysis of their work and others
• How to present and exhibit their work.

Core knowledge to be learnt in Year 12:

In Year 12 the skills developed in Year 10 are revisited and extended. In addition pupils also learn;

• How to use traditional darkroom processes.
• How to present work in a non-digital way (i.e. in a sketchbook)

Core knowledge to be learnt in Year 11 and 13:

In Years 11 and Year 13 our pupils pursue individual self-directed work, as in the Art, Craft and Design Curriculum.