Creative Arts
Welcome to Hillyfield Primary Academy’s Artsmark page. Artsmark has been designed by schools, for schools, to align with School Development Plans, giving the curriculum breadth and balance. As well as recognising schools that are making the arts come alive, the Artsmark award is a practical and valuable tool for enriching a school’s arts provision, whatever the starting point.
Join us as we work towards obtaining the Artsmark award. Our Artsmark pages are intended to inform and engage parents, inspire pupils and celebrate achievement. They are also aimed at providing an online resource, for teachers and other professionals, by creating a portfolio of ideas, plans and materials that can be used beyond our school.
You can follow our Artsmark journey by clicking on the links below to find out more about each of the arts projects we undertake, by reading our school newsletters and by following our school's Twitter feed.
Intent
At Hillyfield Primary Academy, we value the importance of Creative Arts in enabling children to explore their ideas by experimenting, inventing, and creating their own varied works of art using a range of materials and skills.
The Arts embody some of the highest forms of human creativity. We believe we provide an arts curriculum that engages, inspires, and challenges pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art. As pupils progress through the arts, they should be able to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of art and design. They should also know how art, music and dance reflect and shape our history, and contribute to the culture, creativity, and wealth of our nation through a cross curricular approach.
As a school, we believe that the arts are a vital and integral part of children’s education. It provides them with opportunities to develop a range of ways in which they can share and express their individual creativity, whilst learning about and making links with a wide spectrum of different types of art in our society.
All Arts contribute to children’s personal development in creativity, independence, judgement, and self-reflection. Moreover, it enables pupils to develop a natural sense of wonder and curiosity about the world around them and therefore links strongly to our school values. Through the Arts, children are able to embed these whole school values e.g children are encouraged to honour other people’s work and respect the different styles of art around them and are inspired and motivated through the learning of key artists and techniques allowing them to then become independent artists in the choices they have made. The focus is in developing proficiency in their art skills, with the overall aim of developing a rigorous understanding, critical awareness and inspiration of art, music and dance.
The creative arts curriculum will develop children’s critical abilities and understanding of their own and others’ cultural heritages through studying a diverse range of male and female artists and designers throughout history.
Children will develop their understanding of the visual language of art with effective teaching and carefully thought out sequences of lessons and experiences. Understanding of the elements and concepts of art, music and dance will be developed by providing an accessible and engaging curriculum which will enable children to reach their full potential.
Implementation
The teaching and implementation of the creative arts Curriculum is based on the National Curriculum ensuring a well-structured and cross curricular approach to this creative subject. We recognise the impact of arts and cultural learning. We promote a positive experience giving children a creative outlet to explore and allowing children to find new ways of expressing themselves and believing in themselves as artists, musicians and dancers. Our creative arts curriculum allows children to show their creative imagination as well as providing them with opportunities to practice and develop mastery in the key processes of art, music and dance. This is supported through the studying of key artists, architects, designers, performers, directors or dancers and great artists from different points in history. Children are exposed to a range of artists through the three paradigms of time (traditional, modern, and contemporary) where they can gain an understanding of their style and choose elements of their work to use in their own unique piece. The substantive and disciplinary knowledge that children will develop throughout each art element is mapped across each year group and throughout the school to ensure progression. The emphasis on knowledge ensures that children understand the context of the artwork, as well as the artists that they are learning about and being inspired by their different techniques and artwork. We ensure application of knowledge in various contexts, adapting lessons where necessary so that children develop schemas and both substantive and disciplinary knowledge is stored in the long-term memory.
The teaching of art consists of a balance of substantive, theoretical and disciplinary knowledge where the children study relevant artists, musicians and dancers and their style. This enables children to then interpret the elements of art, dance and music and how they can be used and combined to create their desired effect.
Art is taught half termly for a whole day by the art specialists
Music is taught weekly through whole music instrumental lessons by musicians in residence and 6 minutes daily music by the class teachers.
Dance is taught fortnightly by the dance specialists.
Impact
The Creative arts at Hillyfield is assessed through verbal constructive feedback and next steps, with further opportunities to create the piece, to improve their work and ensure that the skills are being developed. The evidence of their work is collected within the art sketch book, school performances and displays which follows the children through the school. Summative assessments take place throughout the year and subject specialist teachers record the progress and attainment against the Knowledge and skills progression documents. Staff use this information to inform future lessons; ensuring children are supported and challenged appropriately.
Further information is gathered through pupil questionnaires; highlighting strengths and achievement and any improvements, knowledge and skills that still need to be embedded. The children’s achievements are celebrated on their End of Year report to parents. Here judgements are made on their effort, achievement, and progress within the arts.
