Art Intent statement

Art and design is afforded great importance at Sefton Park. Not just in terms of its value as a subject and skill set in itself, but also in terms of the spectrum of learning it provides that underpins progress right across the curriculum. The experience of making high quality art teaches children a great deal about the creative processes - decision making, evaluation, their relationships with error or setbacks, and the process of working towards and completing a high quality finished work. Our Art curriculum provides a rich experience in processing and evaluating visual information that is designed to develop the children as skilled artists, designers and visual thinkers.

Creativity: Studying art and design stimulates and develops children’s understanding of the creative process. Creativity is seen and experienced through the encouragement of abstract thinking and exploration of media. Importantly, it is also seen and experienced as the production of something concrete and of value that did not exist before. This involves continual looking and seeing anew and refining design work in ways that fully capture the creator’s intentions. This process involves the collection of source materials, thoughts and ideas and the transformation of these into a finished article. Children learn that a high-quality finished creation is rarely an act of spontaneous generation but requires a great deal of work, of thinking and processing of source materials and ideas. This journey demands a great deal of decision-making, commitment and care.

Curiosity: Fine Art is one of the key mediums through which humans have expressed, captured and responded to the world around them. Curiosity about the world around us and how it might be expressed is at the heart of the creative process. We aim to encourage the same in our children as they take their early steps towards finding subject matter that engages and stimulates response through a range of media, drawing and markmaking. We aim to stimulate interest and curiosity in the media itself as children explore the vast range of effects to be discovered through techniques and the expressive graphic repertoire of tone, line, wash, positive and negative space, rhythm and contrast.

Confidence: From the development of medial and small motor skills in our youngest children to the sophisticated mark making and development of effective design ideas in our eldest, art has a role to play in the development of confidence. Right across the curriculum success depends on a range of skills and dispositions that include the ability to evaluate, edit and make changes as we work towards a considered and high quality end result. Art and design provides a bedrock of these important skills and dispositions that in turn are powerful drivers for success and confidence. The cycle of planning, executing, reviewing, reworking, and completing begins in our youngest children as they explore media. It grows in depth and expression as children move through the school and finds maturity of expression in the  development of effective and powerful design ideas. Our aim here is to develop individual self confidence in art and design, alongside the confidence to develop and improve individual work itself right across the curriculum.

This page is awaiting content, in the meantime please refer to the

National Curriculum which sets out the programmes of study and attainment targets for all subjects.