The Art-skills programme acts as a sound foundation on which the school can build all their other art projects – knowing that their children have received advanced level instructions from a qualified artist. It was developed as a response to the 2013 National Art Curriculum and has been updated to reflect the recent 2023 Ofsted review.
Art-skills is available for Year 1-6 and entails 1 day of delivery per year-group, consisting of a progressive programme covering the building blocks of observational drawing and sketching, painting, colour theory, multi media collage and sketch-booking, achieved using a large variety of high quality art materials. Learning to use sketchbooks effectively is an important and integral part of the art skills programme.
Art-skills also represents an opportunity for class teachers to see how a highly experienced primary art teacher delivers the art curriculum and manages the materials and the classroom. Some teachers avoid delivering art lessons due to the potential messiness of the children’s creative exploration, so the Art-skills programme provides best practice demonstrations of how to contain and deal effectively with such situations. The sessions are inspirational for the children and the teachers.
“Having a professional artist working in our school has been useful as I was able to ask Becky for design advice for an upcoming DT project. Becky suggested ideas on how to create various structures and the best resources to use. She demonstrated the skills and technique needed to create the project, which I then used to experiment with and develop my own ideas into a successful project. This cross-curricular support has been invaluable for my own CPD”
Harriet Sharples, Year 4 teacher – DT lead St Frances de Sales Junior School 2024