Art

Art Statement of Intent

Our teaching of Art at Knightlow provides opportunities to experience and explore materials, skills and techniques in different ways. Our pupils will have regular opportunities to engage with different art forms using sketching, painting, sculpting, printing and working with digital media. They will have the opportunity to create art inspired by famous artists and their style of work. We provide all pupils with the skills and knowledge to create pieces of work they can reflect on, refine and be proud of. Pupils will also be encouraged to recognise how they can improve work and recognise the progression they have made.

We want every pupil to discover what they like and what art and media inspires them to be creative. We will encourage pupils to use their imagination powers and explore and express themselves through the arts, as well as provide opportunities for collaborative working. We strive to inspire pupils to be creative through art challenges, as well as through our everyday curriculum.

Implementation of the Art Curriculum

We provide regular interesting, diverse and cross curricular art opportunities through whole school and home art challenges, as well as through themed art weeks, projects and visits, including learning and experiencing art forms from around the world. We really value the children's work in art and design and work is showcased in our Art Gallery as well on our termly displays around school. The stories4schools project is embedded into our whole school curriculum and provides pupils with the opportunity to be published illustrators. Our Arts Ambassadors also play an important role in ensuring that 'pupil voice' is valued in regards to art and design.

We believe it is important for all children (and staff) to gain the confidence to see themselves as artists. We want them to leave our school with an abundance of wonderful memories of creative experiences that they have had. We also want our pupils to leave us with the knowledge, skills and learning capacities to tackle creative and artistic challenges in the future, taking pride in their progression and the art work they have produced over their time at Knightlow.

Impact of Art at Knightlow

At Knightlow we love expressing ourselves through the Arts and to reflect this we have achieved Artsmark Gold. Our children have produced some wonderful imaginative and creative pieces and this has been evident not only through Art work in sketchbooks and on display in classrooms, but through work produced at home as part of whole school home Art challenges. These challenges are launched regularly in order to inspire, excite and enthuse our children to be creative and experiment with Art techniques and skills learnt at school.

We follow a 'Journey Through Art' approach. We use a spiral curriculum that ensures that children develop and revisit skills regularly. Children explore a wide variety of media and materials, focus on specific artist and are given the skills to reflect on final pieces of work. Our long term planning often incorporates other curriculum areas and whole school projects too.

Every year our stories4schools project involves us creating illustrations and stories that go into a published book. Every child in the school is involved in this project and each year children have produced some wonderful creative and imaginative stories and artwork.

At Knightlow we feel that it is important to challenge and develop our most gifted pupils and they have had opportunities to develop their skills through extra curricular clubs using photography with professional artists and photographers, forest art and still life drawing. Developing textiles skills with our KS2 textiles club was a where pupils designed and created Joseph's Technicolour Dreamcoat which was used in our whole School performance and is on display in school. Pupils have also visited local galleries and workshops at local secondary schools too.

We feel that celebrating our children's fantastic work is very important and our Art Gallery Area displays children's work. Our Arts Ambassadors help judge the artwork on display as well as plan and lead art projects and competitions, most recently our Artsmark Sharing Workshop. We have also had Art work displayed in The National Gallery as part of the Take One Picture project.

Mrs Cathy Amos-Simpson

Art Subject Leader

Arts Ambassadors 2024-2025

Reception: Tallulah and Rafael

Year 1: Eric and Henrietta

Year 2: Ziggy and Safiyya

Year 3: Arthen and Lily

Year 4: Rupert and Tilly

Year 5: Lola B and Adam

Year 6: Jeeya and James

The Journey of Art Whole School Displays January 2024-2025

Autumn Family Challenge 2024-2025

Arts Week 2023-2024 'Connection To Nature'

Sky Arts Competition 'Painting Birds' - Spring Family Challenge

Ben Wilkinson (Age 9 yrs) -Winning Entry Owl Painting

Autumn Family Photography Challenge

Winner of our Autumn Family Photography Challenge 'Autumn Fun'

Elena Parker and Family Winning Photograph 'Autumn Fun'

Whole School Autumn Challenge 'Nature Around Us' Inspired by Andy Goldsworthy and nature in our local environment

Whole School Sky Arts Week with the Theme of Identity

Family Photography Challenge 'The Season of Spring'

Whole School Picasso Portrait Project

Winner of the Family Spring Photography Challenge Charles Waterworth 'Fantastic Frog!'

Jenson B-'Dragonfly' Spring Photography Challenge

Stories4School Artwork for our published book 'Knightlow Symphony of Stories'

'What We'll Build' Family Challenge and Exhibition

Global Forest Digital Whole School Art Challenge

Global Digital Forest Click on the link to see our tree designs as part of the Global Forest. Our school have created tree designs as part of a whole school art challenge, children have used a range of media, resources and techniques for this challenge