Art and Design

Intent - What do we want for our developing artists?

At Horn’s Mill, we aim to provide a skills-based art curriculum that nurtures creativity, imagination, and resilience. Our curriculum has been carefully designed by staff to follow a clear process, teaching and revisiting core skills in a way that is both progressive and inspiring. Where possible, Art is meaningfully linked to the wider curriculum to deepen understanding and relevance.

It has been designed to ensure that all children develop the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need to become expressive, reflective, and culturally aware young artists. Learning is built around three core disciplines, painting, clay, and drawing, which provide a strong foundation for developing depth, precision, and mastery. These skills are revisited and strengthened each year, allowing pupils to build progressively on what they know and can do.

Throughout each project, pupils explore the work of a wide range of artists, makers, and designers. They investigate the inspirations behind their work and consider how art reflects, responds to, and shapes the world around us. This exposure helps pupils recognise the role of art in society and understand how creative ideas evolve across time and cultures.

In lessons, key techniques are modelled clearly, with misconceptions addressed to support secure understanding. Pupils are encouraged to practise, refine, and apply these skills independently, producing final pieces that demonstrate developing control and creativity. We place high value on resilience and independence, helping children understand that mistakes and experimentation are essential parts of the artistic process.

As pupils move through the school, they are supported in developing increasingly sophisticated critical thinking. They learn to reflect on their own work and the work of others, recognising how art and design contribute to our cultural heritage and contemporary life. Our curriculum is intentionally diverse, introducing children to artists and creators from a wide range of backgrounds. This broadens their perspectives and deepens their understanding of how different voices and traditions continue to influence modern practice.

Through this rich and carefully structured curriculum, pupils not only acquire technical artistic skills but also develop imagination, self-expression, and cultural appreciation. They come to understand the power of art in shaping identity, communicating ideas, and contributing to both personal and collective creativity.

Implementation - How is the curriculum delivered?

Art is taught to every year group by a specialist teacher, with pupils recording their learning and progress in sketchbooks. Lessons focus on three core disciplines - painting, clay, and drawing - ensuring children develop depth and security in these areas. Projects are taught in a sequence of lessons that provide time for skills to be practised, refined, and applied in meaningful final pieces.

The formal elements of art (colour, texture, pattern, shape, line, space, and form) underpin all projects and ensure progression of artistic knowledge and understanding across year groups. Each project follows our art learning cycle: a cycle of research, skill development, exploration of media, creation of a final piece, and evaluation. Pupils investigate the work of artists, experiment with materials and techniques, and use their sketchbooks to annotate, plan, and reflect on their learning. Skills are modelled clearly, broken down into steps, and misconceptions are addressed. Pupils are encouraged to practise, revisit, and refine their skills, recognising that resilience and perseverance are key to artistic development. In Key Stage 2, pupils have increased opportunities to evaluate, annotate, and develop their drawings, paintings, and sculptures. Re-drafting and refinement are embedded as part of the creative process, encouraging children to see art as iterative and evolving.

Technical knowledge and subject-specific vocabulary are explicitly taught, modelled, and revisited. Pupils are encouraged to annotate their sketchbooks, making connections between their own practice and the work of artists they have studied.

This carefully planned implementation ensures that all children develop as confident, skilled, and reflective artists, capable of producing artwork of depth and quality while understanding the creative journey that underpins it.

Curriculum Enrichment

Where possible, art learning is enriched by contacting the artists that we learn about in lessons. Artists communicate with our school through social media and send us examples of their work. We believe in giving children an audience for their work so children’s work is often displayed locally. Previous artworks have been displayed in the library, in care homes and in the local café. As a school, we take part in various art competitions. For example, we design a logo for the local half marathon t-shirt each year and we designed artwork for our local housing development hoardings.

To provide a purpose for their artwork, children are provided with opportunities to share their work through having a school art gallery, so children get to enjoy the end process as well as inspire and encourage each other. This helps pupils consider the views and opinions of peers also improve their work.

Impact - How do we know our Art curriculum is effective?

We place great value on listening to the voices of our children as a key measure of progress and understanding. Pupils confidently discuss their learning, explaining the process of designing, making, and evaluating to meet objectives and design criteria. Pupil voice is integral to assessing understanding and informs teachers’ reflections, helping to continually improve the curriculum offer.

Essential learning statements enable teachers to assess progress effectively and ensure coverage is secure. Children's learning process is clearly documented in sketchbooks for Art. Each project culminates in a final product that demonstrates the skills and knowledge children have developed. Across the school, progression is evident both in the quality of final pieces and in the processes recorded, showing how children build on prior learning year on year.

If you have any further enquiries relating to the Art curriculum, please email Mrs Caroe on ecaroe@hornsmill.cheshire.sch.uk.