Art & Design

Who are we?

Head of Department:  Miss J Horbury

Teachers – Miss J Cooper and Miss L Mitchell

Tecnician – Mrs S Holroyd

Curriculum Intent

To share the significance of Art and Design as a subject that can be moral, spiritual, cultural, emotional, political, informative, expressive, creative and enjoyable.

Each stage of learning in Art uses the formula of drawing ,developing, contextualising and finalising an idea from start to completion. This journey will naturally have varying outcomes for each student.

Each project has this structure as its foundation and students are then encouraged to develop and personalise this in a way for them to achieve their highest and most meaningful outcomes.

Art is accessible to all students and our aim is for all students to achieve their best in Art and to be able to appreciate Art in the wider world in all its contexts.

Curriculum Map

What do we do?

The Art and Design department encourages students to use their creativity productively; to enjoy being an inquisitive researcher and to build confidence as a learner and maker.

Students use a wide range of materials, both traditional and non-traditional and keep ‘visual diaries’ and sketchbooks to record their findings. A range of 2D and 3D Artwork is produced and students are encouraged to develop their critical thinking skills in the appreciation of the Artwork of other Artists, craftspeople and designers.

Art galleries and other venues are visited in order that students may experience art works at first hand. The onus throughout both Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 is on progress and enjoyment, leading to outstanding GCSE results and the best possible attainment for each individual student.

At GCSE, students produce two projects; one is a self-portrait and the second is based upon natural objects. Both projects must cover four assessment objectives that include; observational drawing, developing ideas, studying and analysing the work of other artists and a final outcome based upon the previous objectives.  As part of the observational drawing tasks and analysing the work of other artists students are required to annotate their work using appropriate art specific vocabulary giving their thoughts, opinions and ideas as well as evaluating their work as it progresses.

This portfolio counts as 60% of the final GCSE grade. The remaining 40% comes from an externally set task. Students are given an exam paper and choose one question. They are allowed to discuss their choices with their teacher and will be advised upon the most suitable option to suit their skills. They are allowed eight weeks to prepare their work and must cover all the assessment objectives. They are then allowed ten hours to produce their final outcome. The ten hours is split into suitable blocks of time.

Photography

Photography is a creative GCSE course which encourages visual exploration through digital media.  Students will use digital cameras to record images and software to manipulate them, creating art style photographs.  They will learn what elements are needed to create a successful photograph or image and will be annotating to explain their thoughts and processes.

We follow the AQA specification which requires an ability to record, explore, analyse and create over four different objectives.  Students will be marked out of 96 with 24 marks available for each objective.

Examples of project themes could include close-up, viewpoints, colours as well as individual exploration of themes.

A day in the life…

An example of what students can expect on a typical day in Art & Design.

Year 8: Dia de Los Muertos

Each student designs their own mask based upon the beliefs of the Mexican people during the festival known as The Day of The Dead.

The festival is a time for celebration in remembering the lives of loved ones. It is a happy festival and very brightly coloured artefacts are a key part of the celebrations.  The students make 3d masks using clay which is fired in the kiln to 1000 degrees to make it permanent.  The masks are then painted with the students own design.