At St Bartholomew’s, art and design is a highly valued subject and we want all children to benefit from a broad and balanced curriculum. We want art and design to provide the children with opportunities to develop creativity whilst developing new technical skills, and to offer an outlet to express and celebrate their individual interests, thought and ideas.

Art and design should be a way for children to celebrate their own personalities and identities whilst engaging with the vibrant world around them.

Our art and design curriculum is based on the National Curriculum and linked to topics to ensure a well-structured and cross curricular approach. Our lessons are sequenced, with no fixed outcome. We want all children at St Bartholomew’s to develop their technical art skills but we also value the reflective critical process which leads to the development of creativity and other key skills.

We ensure that children have access to a wide range of good-quality resources to support their physical and sensory needs.

The children’s understanding is enhanced by learning about famous local, national and international artists. These are carefully selected to expose the children to a range of artists from diverse cultural, religious, geographic, historical and ethnic contexts. 

We use whole school projects, competitions and events to encourage collaboration between children whilst also celebrating individuality and uniqueness.  

Ongoing assessments are carried out throughout the year. It is important for children to assess their own work and that of others. In doing so the children are developing technical skills alongside additional skills such as resilience, metacognition and critical thinking, all of which can be used to support learning across the entire National Curriculum and also in later life.

Children express themselves creatively; completed pieces of work demonstrate their individuality and how they have responded to verbal feedback from staff and their peers. We build on each child’s existing cultural capital, and value freedom of expression rather than expecting everyone to produce the same outcome.