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.
Focused skill development: The curriculum is organised around three core disciplines — painting, clay, and drawing. This focus ensures children develop a deep and secure understanding of the skills involved with each medium. Skills are revisited and built upon year on year to enable progression and mastery.
Exploring artists and influences: Pupils research and explore the work of artists, makers, and designers within the themes of their projects. They consider what inspired key artists and how art reflects and shapes the world around us.
Practise, independence and resilience: In lessons, skills are modelled with misconceptions addressed. Pupils practise key techniques and are given opportunities to apply them independently in final pieces, which are then discussed and evaluated. At Horn’s Mill, we value the importance of pupils grappling with skills and developing resilience, understanding that mistakes are an essential part of learning.
Critical and cultural understanding: As pupils’ progress, they are encouraged to think more critically and to develop an appreciation of art as a reflection of history and culture. They learn how art and design contribute to creativity and cultural development, both past and present.
Diversity and inspiration: Our curriculum broadens pupils’ cultural understanding by introducing them to diverse artists, designers, and creators. Pupils investigate their impact on history and consider how their ideas and designs continue to shape modern-day practice.
Through this curriculum, children not only acquire essential artistic skills but also grow in confidence, imagination, and cultural awareness. They learn to express themselves through art, to value the creative process, and to appreciate the role of art in shaping both individual identity and society as a whole.
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. Art alternates with Design & Technology each half term, allowing projects to be taught in a sequence of lessons that provide time for skills to be practised, refined, and applied in meaningful final pieces.
Key principles of art: Children are introduced to and revisit the formal elements of art — colour, texture, pattern, shape, line, space, and form. These underpin all projects and ensure progression of artistic knowledge and understanding across year groups.
Structured process: Each project follows 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.
Developing skills and vocabulary: 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.
Building resilience: 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.
Critical reflection: 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.
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. These artists sometimes 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 in the library, in care homes and in the local café. We take part in 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?
Pupil Voice at Horn’s Mill, 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.
High-Quality Outcomes The learning process is clearly documented in sketchbooks for Art and DT journals or project folders for Design & Technology. 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.
Art Outcomes
Reception: By the end of Reception, children will have explored a variety of media, including painting, drawing, and malleable materials, preparing them for Art in Year 1. They will also begin to develop an awareness of key artists to inspire future learning.
Years 1–6: Children’s sketchbooks and final pieces will show clear progression in technical skills, creativity, and understanding of artists’ work. Key vocabulary and concepts will be evidenced through pupil voice, annotations, and evaluations, reflecting both knowledge and applied learning.
Design & Technology Outcomes
Reception: Pupils will have explored simple construction, textiles, and food-related activities, developing foundational skills and understanding of the design process.
Years 1–6: Children will produce projects that demonstrate increasing complexity and independence. Skills in research, design, making, and evaluating will be evident in their work and documented processes. Progression is shown through the sophistication of techniques, problem-solving, and ability to meet design criteria successfully.
Through these measures, we ensure that our curriculum has a tangible impact: children develop as confident, resilient, and creative learners, equipped with the skills and knowledge to express themselves, solve problems, and appreciate the wider cultural and technological world.
If you have any further enquiries relating to the Art curriculum, please email Mrs Caroe on ecaroe@hornsmill.cheshire.sch.uk.