Art at The Grange Primary School
At The Grange Primary School, we have developed an art curriculum which offers a range of opportunities for pupils to meet and exceed the National Curriculum expectations and has been designed around pupils’ needs and interests. The progression skills have been tightly developed to ensure that steps between year groups (from FS1-Y6) offer opportunities to hone skills within six different mediums as well as challenge pupils sufficiently within their year group. To develop cultural capital, pupils are exposed to a range of artists’ work from history (up to and including the present day) to discuss, critique and draw ideas from. Artists have been identified to meet the protected characteristics and reflect the world around our pupils. This supports pupils to develop their understanding of British Values and ensure that they become responsible, tolerant and empathetic individuals.
Pupil voice is central to the arts curriculum in school, with subject representatives leading the subjects with their teacher subject lead. Subject representatives and children gifted and talented within the arts participate in specially developed arts days tailored to their interests and strengths.
We firmly believe that through working with the arts, children build confidence and communication skills, resilience and drive that will help them grow into happy, articulate, successful young people. The arts help to support the development of children’s awareness of arts careers and thus, raise aspirations. As a result, Art is not limited to just the six mediums which we teach, there are close links to the other curricular subjects, particularly the creative subjects to ensure meaningful links and experiences take place and this relationship is celebrated through Arts Week during Summer term. Many further opportunities for Art experiences take place throughout the year, including:
- After-school clubs;
- Participating in a range of school, local and national competitions;
- Contributing to a variety of galleries within the local community;
- Working with an Artist in Residence;
- School trips offer artwork opportunities;
- Continuous provision in EYFS (indoor and outdoor art opportunities).
Artsmark Award
The Artsmark Award is the only creative quality standard for schools and education settings, accredited by Arts Council England. Artsmark was created to ensure that every child should have the opportunity to create, compose, and perform as well as to visit, participate in and review extraordinary work.
At The Grange Primary School, we are dedicated to developing arts and culture for all children and as such, embarked on the Artsmark journey. The two year process enabled us to showcase the arts provision in school and staff and pupils alike will be recognised and awarded with an Artsmark accreditation.
The Grange Primary School was awarded the Artsmark Gold Award in July 2018. The award panel had the following comments to make about our dedication to the Arts:
“The panel recognise your strong commitment and enthusiasm to the arts. Your CPD programme focusing on the use of peer critique in art to improve consistency across the school was noted as a strength as were the use of arts to support those pupils who might be struggling in some areas of the curriculum.”
We are currently embarking on another two year Artsmark journey to renew our award. We continue to maintain the Gold standard through the intent, implementation and impact monitoring of the Arts throughout school and strive to extend our offer to schools within the local authority.
For more information on the Artsmark Award please visit the appropriate website: www.artsmark.org.uk/
Arts Award
The Arts Award is awarded to individual children for their work within the arts. It inspires young people to grow their arts and leadership talents: it is creative, valuable and accessible. Since Summer 2017, through the arts extra-curricular prospects offered at The Grange Primary School, children have had the opportunity to achieve an Arts Award at the ‘Discover’ Level.
Arts Award Discover is an introductory award, designed for ages 5 and above. To achieve an Arts Award Discover, children participate in a range of arts activities, researching artists and their work and sharing their arts discoveries. The awarding body responsible for Arts Award is Trinity College London, in association with Arts Council England.
As we continue to expand and embed our arts offer post-COVID, The Grange Primary School will offer the Arts Award at both the ‘Discover’ (5 years+) and ‘Explore’ (7 years+) levels. This further supports our pupils to raise their aspirations within the arts, be prepared for secondary school (where the Arts Award is also offered at ‘Bronze’, ‘Silver’ and ‘Gold’ levels) and build valuable cultural capital for the future.
For more information on the Arts Award please visit the appropriate website: www.artsaward.org.uk
