Art at Millfield Primary School

Statement of Intent – Art

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” 

Pablo Picasso

Subject Champion - James Lillistone

Millfield pupils will leave primary school at the end of Year 6 having had the opportunity to meet the four main aims of the National Curriculum for Art and Design. 

They will show enjoyment for art, be enthusiastic about the subject and be eager to engage with any artistic activity.  They will have developed skills across drawing, painting, sculpture and wider artistic areas.  They will have understood what it means to be creative, and to have developed their own capacity for creativity.  They will be able to evaluate and analyse artistic work and use the appropriate language of art and design to discuss it.  They will have a good knowledge of several important artists, art movements and their historical and cultural significance. 

We believe the subject of art offers a huge opportunity to develop skills of analysis, evaluation and creativity, which are fundamental skills for a range of careers children may aspire to in the future.  Art is fundamentally a practical subject, which will develop fine motor skills and the ability to present ideas with an awareness of audience, which again, are skills applicable to a range of practical careers. 

An understanding of great art develops an awareness of significant human thought and emotion, and also of history and of the development of our culture as it is today.  Pupils at Millfield will have knowledge of a range of great artists and designers and will have had opportunities to consider and reflect upon the artists’ significance for their own time, their significance for our culture today, and how their work can be meaningful towards our own personal thoughts, emotions and development. 

We want pupils at Millfield to be inspired by art.  The subject will help broaden their horizons of the world around them, both in the UK and abroad, and of significant human thinking over time.  Producing artwork can in itself be a relaxing, calming and therapeutic activity, as well as an outlet for emotions, so will be of great help to developing the mental health of pupils.

Implementation

Teaching and learning sequence – overview of a term of art

Each term, the teaching and learning for art will incorporate:

• Opportunity to look at, discuss, analyse, evaluate and respond to the work of a famous artist.  This may or may not link in with the term’s Learning Theme.  Children should learn when and where the artist lived, a little of their life story, what is special about their artwork, how they produced it and what meaning, ideas or emotion they were trying to convey. 

• Learn and practise a specific skill in the given area of drawing, painting, printing or sculpture.  Practise using a particular medium.

• Plan and sketch out their own design for a finished piece of artwork.  This may be according to a stimulus from their Learning Theme, or producing a picture ‘in the style of’ a particular artist they are looking at.  

• Produce a finished piece of artwork.  (The picture itself, a copy of or a photograph of will go into their Art Tracker book).  The finished piece should also be displayed.

• Evaluate the finished piece against the aims for the piece.  (In line with the progression of skills for the year group).