At Southbury we follow the National Curriculum for Art and Design whose aims are to ensure that every child:

• produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences
• become proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques
• evaluate and analyse creative works using the language of art, craft and design
• know about great artists, craft makers and designers, and understand the historical and cultural development of their art forms.

This will be achieved by pupils being taught:

In Key Stage 1

• To use a range of materials creatively to design and make products.
• To use drawing, painting and sculpture to develop and share their ideas, experiences and imagination.
• To develop a wide range of art and design techniques in using colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space
• About the work of a range of artists, craft makers and designers, describing the differences and similarities between different practices and disciplines, and making links to their own work.

Key stage 2

• To create sketch books to record their observations and use them to review and revisit ideas.
• To improve their mastery of art and design techniques, including drawing, painting and sculpture with a range of materials [for example, pencil, charcoal, paint, clay].
• About great artists, architects and designers in history.

At Southbury children are encouraged to explore and develop their skills through a wide range of media including but not limited to sketching, painting, printing, 3D work and collage.  Although Art is sometimes taught as a standalone topic in our school it has the ability to be weaved throughout the curriculum and we do not under-estimate its importance. Research suggests that the arts develop creativity, a core pre-requisite of innovative mind sets, communicative attitudes and problem solving; it seems obvious that the skill of ‘creating’ is fundamental to the development of solutions. We are continuing to develop our use of sketchbooks from year 2 upwards and will encourage the importance of experimentation, exploration and pushing ideas in imaginative ways. At Southbury we like to celebrate Art with a whole school event where we display our work either as a whole school gallery or in individual classes and invite our parents to visit our school exhibition.

• “Every child is an artist” Pablo Picasso
• “Creativity takes courage” Henri Matisse
• “The world is but a canvas to our imagination” Henry David Thoreau