Art and Design



 


Student Art Blog

We celebrate the History of Art and Design and endeavour to study it from both a euro-centric and pan-cultural perspective reflecting the School s multi-cultural nature.
It informs and contextualises our entire creative practice and allows the individual to contemplate the ethical & moral responsibilities of the artist; to distinguish between high, popular & commercial art & consider the status of Art within our industrial society.


Key Stage  Three

Year 7 Establishing Good Practice.
Year 8 Developing Visual Connections.
Year 9 Cultivating Curiosity.

All pupils receive one double period of practical work per fortnight: alternating with their single lesson of art history. Initially, they are introduced to a broad cross-section of art disciplines taught thematically. These alternate so that within the three years, they will have experienced working both collaboratively and independently across a diverse range of techniques including sewing, sculpture, printing, painting, drawing and CAD.

However, we do not seek to be wholly prescriptive and wherever opportunity arises, will work with other departments within the school or utilise external exhibitions or events to underpin projects e.g within the International week programme.

We encourage mutual respect, positive criticism and visual awareness.






Key Stage Four

Pupils elect to choose Art for GCSE study and we follow the Edexcel unendorsed syllabus. They work prescriptively for the first term building their portfolios and then increasingly take responsibility for more autonomous independent learning.
Art History underpins all aspects of the GCSE & A level courses. The work is individual and increasingly self-directed determining specialist areas of critical research dependent on personal interest. e.g. self portraiture might lead the student to Rembrandt, Freud or Spencer as readily as contemporary Asian, Korean or Japanese equivalents.

They visit the Tate and National Galleries alongside individually targeted visits to museums and galleries and the course culminates in an exhibition within the Art department.

Key Stage Five
In the sixth from, we offer the unendorsed Edexcel AS and A Level in Art and Design. The course dove-tails with the GCSE and we expect students to study independently and develop sustained self-directed projects which embrace experiment and are refined to visually persuasive conclusions.

We organise annual L6 visits to St Ives, exhibitions in London and make regular sixth form visits abroad to e.g. New York, Venice, and Barcelona. This year we are taking the year 10 to Poland (May) alongside a return visit to New York (October). Weekly upper school life-drawing classes are offered for both the Spring and Winter half-terms. The sixth form courses culminate in a collaborative end of course exhibition which lasts for a week and is made available for the whole school to visit.