At Dymchurch, we take a skills-based focus to the children’s learning and development. The curriculum has been designed specifically to allow children the chance to develop a variety of artistic and design techniques, with quality instruction and meaningful support. The children progress through each learning unit, taking in to account previous confidences and, using a variety of artists and design processes, build on their ideas and preconceptions. A large part of this has been tailoring artists and periods/movements that will be most appropriate to their age and skill level, while being able to offer opportunities for those children who have a high confidences to express themselves with a greater understanding of what they are being asked to achieve.

Through the progressive and immersive use of various medium, the children will be encouraged to develop their own style and interpretation of a variety of subject matters over their lessons. By exploring the context behind an artist’s ideas, or a particular craft, the children’s awareness will develop and help guide their own ideas within that specific framework.

This will allow all the children to be able to access each unit (which builds on from previous learning) with a “fear-free” outcome. There will be no bad artists, just different interpretations on a theme that still achieve the units’ aims – to build and develop skills within art, and broaden the children’s knowledge of artists, movements and the historical context and reasoning behind them.

All of the Art units taught and skills learnt at Dymchurch can be found in the documentation below.

Our art intent:

• Exploring an artist/movement in detail: what it was they were looking to show in their art and the techniques they used to achieve this.
• Putting the artist and movement into a historical context, to show how they were reflecting the signs of their times.
• Using a range of media and exploring different applications of this.
• Allowing the children time to reflect on previous learning and how they might change and develop their ideas for the next session.