Woodthorpe Church of England Primary School

At Woodthorpe we prioritise and celebrate Art's importance, as we believe it stimulates creativity and imagination. Though following the National Curriculum, using our topic based approach through Cornerstones, and shaping this to our own personal sequence, we believe that art provides an opportunity for self-expression and communication in our school setting. We value art and highlight the importance of this by giving each child their own quality A3 sketch book at the start of Key Stage One. This then follows the children to Year 6 to that they can celebrate their journey as artists during their time at Woodthorpe.

Curriculum Intent

We strive to teach a broad and balanced art curriculum, which provides the children with exciting prospects to express themselves whilst simultaneously developing their art and design skills and knowledge. Through our art curriculum, we would like to develop children’s confidence on experimenting with art and making this individualised, rather than an emphasis on perfection or a uniform outcome.

Our subject intent is to:

Provide a rich environment in which we encourage our children to communicate through the use of colour, texture, form, pattern and materials. Investigating lines, shapes, colours and textures help our children with the basics and enable other work such as 3D and printing to happen.
Provide opportunities for children to produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences
Make opportunities for the children to become part of school projects that include paint and craft that contribute to the school environment
Encourage children to evaluate and analyse creative works using the language of art, craft and design, as well as doing this to their own and peer’s work.
Teach about modern and historical great artists, craft makers and designers, and participate in projects that are inspired by a variety of these.
Always to maintain high expectations of pupil’s abilities, allowing children autonomy over their art journey so that they can learn and grow.
Encourage confidence and evaluative skills so that the children can become independent on their own artistic journey.
Ensure art is accessible, ambitious and provides cultural capital to all pupils, including those who are disadvantaged, and pupils with SEND
Provide children with opportunities related to art that contribute to the wider community.

To read more on our Intent, Implementation and Impact statements, consideration of British Values, SMSC and careers in Art and Design please view our 3I's document below:

Woodthorpe C of E Primary School Intent, Implementation and Impact Statement

Curriculum Coverage

In our curriculum, we aspire to cover a vast variety of significant artists to enrich the children's experience at school with modern and classic art. We structure our curriculum around topics based on the Cornerstones Curriculum Maestro, which is a creative and thematic approach to learning delivered through imaginative learning projects. These provide a rich menu of exciting and motivating learning activities that make creative links between all aspects of our children’s learning. We base our artists studies on those that relate to the art project we may be undertaking, alongside relevant themes such as Black History Month or World Book Day. We work on a one year cycle in Reception, a two year cycle in Key Stage 1, a three year cycle for Year 3, 4 and 5, and a one year cycle for Year 6.

Please read the overview below if you are interested in our Cornerstones Projects and specifically how these are related to Art and Design at Woodthorpe, alongside a summary of the key artists we will study and any enrichment opportunities each term. This document will be updated on the website termly to show new opportunities that we are providing.

Summary of Art and Design at Woodthorpe Primary 2024-25

We strive cover a wide variety of men and women from different cultures, inspirational artists who are living with different disabilities, alongside covering artists that are both alive and dead.

Please click bellow to see some of the projects and artists that the school will be learning about throughout this year across all classes and age range:

Artists Across School Autumn Term

In order to teach a progressive curriculum, teachers plan their learning based on our Skills and Progression grids that have been formed by the staff at our school. The artistic vocabulary they learn also gets progressively challenging which can be found broken down into year groups on the vocabulary progression grids. Each artistic skill they learn will be deepened each year. Our staff must also follow the Art and Design Policy which is reviewed termly by the Art Coordinator.

If you would like to view any of the progression documents mentioned, please follow the links below.

2023-24 Core Knowledge Grid for Art and Design in Woodthorpe

2023-24 Art Knowledge and Skills Progression at Woodthorpe

Art and Design Policy

As a school, we are constantly striving to make ourselves the best we can be for our children. As the curriculum develops and the opportunities available to the school, we create action plans for each subject on how we can consistently develop and grow. If you are interested in what the school is targeting towards for Art and Design, please click below to view our action plan.

Art and Design Action Plan 2023-24

Throughout the year we offer art-based afterschool clubs (please contact our school office for the half termly timetable), and recently have a new creative area in our Outdoor Classroom that children can access at breaks and lunchtimes (weather permitting). We have some amazing artistic opportunities happening this year.

Exciting Upcoming Creative Events for the 24-25 Academic Year:

For Remembrance Day 2024, Woodthorpe's children will complete a home art project of making any poppy art to decorate our lovely school and the local memorial.

Whole school 'Take One Picture' project 2024/25 based on Pieter de Hooch, 'The Courtyard of a House in Delft'.

Key Stage One have an Art Trip planned in Autumn Term 2024 to the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield to learn about local artists and art work, alongside completing a sculpture workshop to enrich their topic on Still Life Art and sculpture.

Woodthorpe look forward to joining Bolsover Lantern Parade 2024 (30th November) for the third year in a row, where in school we provide every child the opportunity to make a lantern and invite our families to join us in this local display.

Woodthorpe look forward to participating in Sky Access All Arts Week 2025 in June.
Year 6 have an Art Trip planned to Sheffield Hallam University Art Department where they will learn all about the future local artists and a future career in Art.
The School Council are hoping to take Art Work to the local care home 'The Willows' at both Easter and Christmas with the Worship Squad and sing the residents songs.
A whole school trip is planned for Spring Term 2025 to visit Yorkshire Sculpture Park to launch our 3D Sculpture Week in school

Creative Events for Previous Years

In the 23-24 Academic year, we participated in a whole school project; 'Take One Picture' 2023/24 based on Henri Rosseau's painting 'Surprised' which is ran by the National Gallery. This is a child-led project where the children are in control of the work they produce. The children showcased their week's learning in an assembly, and the work produced in this project is showcased in our school entrance hall. This was enriched by a whole school trip to Yorkshire Wildlife Park, where the children completed art tasks whilst looking at real animals, just like the jungle image in 'Surprised'.

For Black History Month (October 2023), each class looked at a female black artist following this years theme: Celebrating Our Sisters. The children produced some wonderful artwork inspired by these artists after learning about them, which are proudly displayed around our school.

Bolsover Lantern Festival 2023 - Excitingly, Year 6 made Willow lanterns with an artist in school. The rest of the school made their own lantern with their teachers and were invited to the lantern parade on Saturday 2nd December. Many of our amazing Woodthorpe families attended, getting us into the Christmas spirit!

In June 2023, Woodthorpe became part of the Art Builders Schools by the Animate Arts Company. They held their Builders Day 2023 with the theme 'Brick by Brick'. We joined some amazing live workshops throughout the day, including Crafting, Storytelling and Creative Moves. The children joined lots of other schools live on Zoom for these sessions, and had the best day.

Woodthorpe participated in the Sky Access All Arts Week 2023. This is a week of promoting all arts, from drama to poetry, to music composition and photography, all the way into creative drawing and painting.
Class 3 made some incredible raps based upon their favourite fairytales, and Year 1 and 2 enjoyed learning all about different sounds and composing different types of music to match different emotions. Year 6 did some incredible perspective photography. What an amazing week.

In May 2023, Year 6 took a trip to Sheffield Hallam University to visit the Art Department. Hallam put on multiple workshops to coincide with their theme of Abstract Art. The children were so excited to see the Art Student Exhibition of their final pieces! They even got to draw on the floor as part of an art project at university. They loved it!

In March 2023, the whole school made Easter Art for our local care home. The School Council and Worship Team delivered these to them, and performed some of their favourite Easter songs. The residents decorated their rooms with the school's art and the sound of them singing brought a smile to many of their faces.

In December 2022, Key Stage 1 visited Sherwood Forest, where alongside looking at habitats the rangers gave them some nature art to do! They will used clay and natural resources to create art pieces inspired by Andy Goldsworthy. The children really enjoyed going on a colour matching hunt throughout the forest, and making their own nature bracelets collecting their favourite things along their walks.

In December 2022, we also proudly took part in the whole school designing and creating a Christmas Tree Decoration for St John the Baptist Christmas Tree Festival. These were on display in the Church for families and children to see. We enjoyed seeing our decorations on display there during our Christingle on Wednesday 21st December.

In November 2022, we worked so hard as a school to prepare for our involvement in Bolsover Lantern Parade on Saturday 26th November. All staff and children made a lantern in school and had the opportunity to attend the parade at Bolsover Castle! Our older children helped our younger children with their creations and many of us took to the streets of Bolsover as a school community, lighting up the streets with our lanterns.

In November 2022, our whole school had a home project to create a poppy. This made a fantastic remembrance area in school. Our amazing children also painted stones and lay these at our local war memorial on November 11th which decorated our local community beautifully.

In October 2022, we celebrated Black History Month in Art! Please have a look at our amazing, collaborative school Art and Design display, where we all studied significant black people of our choice to sketch, paint, draw and learn about!

In September 2022, some of our Year 5 and 6's proudly produced some ceramic work to celebrate the Walking Together Mining Memorial that commemorates 106 miners who lost their lives in three major disasters at Marham Colliery in 1937, 1938 and 1973. Please see some of their amazing work which was exhibited to the local community in October below.