About the Subject

We have shaped an exciting and diverse programme of learning that encourages students to create high quality, personal art work that is both purposeful, meaningful and skilled.

Throughout KS3 all students have art, every week. At no point is it put on a rotation with other subjects. This facilitates rigour in skills development and continuous practise over three years. We believe this offers the strongest foundation for KS4..

Starting in KS3 and continuing at GCSE, students build skills and work towards developing their own ideas for projects. They are encouraged to be independent through the use of open-ended, independent class and homework projects. At KS3 we work in drawing and painting, ceramics, print and table top 3D work. Project and workshop-based lessons are rooted in understanding the relationship between theory and practise and using this understanding to accelerate practical creativity.

At A level, students work in an experimental way through practical workshops in response to briefs set by the teacher. This approach, enables students to realise their intentions and to express their own their ideas. We have an open-door policy in the Art department with students from all years working alongside each other at lunchtimes and in after-school clubs.

We offer two clubs at KS3, architecture club at KS4 and interventions/extended studio hours for KS4 and KS5.

The Curriculum

Key Stage 3

The Art curriculum at KS3 is devised to allow students to

• Build on their experience at primary school,
• Develop and extend their practical skills and their verbal and visual literacy
• Increase their understanding and appreciation of art and artists/designers
• Develop imaginative and original thought and experimentation
• Develop skilled working across painting, drawing, ceramics, printmaking and writing about art
• Enjoy creative and personal expression through the visual arts
• Raise questions and explore personal or global themes through curious visual art making.

Key Stage 4

The key to success in the GCSE course is enthusiasm and dedication, sound drawing skills, independent research, consistent hard work, reviewing and improving work and working to deadlines. To enjoy and achieve at A level, students must be willing to experiment, take risks and explore new ways of working. Art A level is a journey of exploration through many ways of creating and reflecting on visual art. There is no prescribed way of achieving an A level in art.

The portfolio unit consists of three projects that the students will work on until January of year 11. It is worth 60% of their final grade and is marked out of 96.

The externally set task: AQA will provide a separate externally set assignment with seven different starting points. Students must select and respond to one starting point from their chosen title. The externally set assignment provides students with the opportunity to demonstrate, through an extended creative response, their ability to draw together different areas of knowledge, skills and/or understanding in response to their selected starting point. The extended creative response must explicitly evidence students’ ability to draw together different areas of knowledge, skill and/or understanding from initial engagement with their selected starting point through to their realisation of intentions in the 10 hours of supervised time.

Work is celebrated exhibited in the end of year show of Year 11.

 A Level Art & Design

Component 1 - Following two terms of experimental and workshop based, studio learning, students develop work based on personally devised issue, concept or theme over two terms. This leads to a finished outcome or a series of related finished outcomes. Practical elements should make connections with some aspect of contemporary or past practice of artist(s), designer(s), photographers or craftspeople and include written work of no less than 1000 and no more than 3000 words which supports the practical work. The Personal Investigation is worth 60% of the overall grade and is marked out of 96.

Component 2 - (10 weeks) Students respond to a stimulus, provided by AQA, to produce work which provides evidence of their ability to work independently within specified time constraints, developing a personal and meaningful response which addresses all the assessment objectives and leads to a finished outcome or a series of related finished outcomes. They apply the independence and skills, work ethic that has been learned, developed and modelled through Component 1. Component 2 culminates in a timed-outcome, completed under exam conditions. It is worth 40% of the final grade and is marked out of 96.

Special Requirements/other Information:

Minimum grade 6 at GCSE Art and English

The key to success in the A level course is enthusiasm and dedication, sound drawing skills, independent research, consistent hard work, reviewing and improving work and working to deadlines.

Every year our A level students go on to Foundation Courses at London Art colleges such as the Royal Drawing school, Kingston University, University of Arts - London, Morley College and also straight to Art/Architecture degrees in recent years to Cambridge (Architecture) The Bartlett School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art, The Ruskin School, Oxford University, Kingston, Leeds, Falmouth and Central St Martins.

Enrichment and Extra-Curricular

We make maximum use of the wealth of galleries and artists on our doorstep. Students from all years make regular gallery visits. We enter competitions such as “The Fourth Plinth”, RA Schools Summer Exhibition and Young Art.

We regularly visits the following galleries:

Tate Britain – we can get to the Tate Britain and back in a double lesson!

Tate Modern

National Gallery

National Portrait Gallery

The Courtauld Gallery

The Hayward Gallery

The Whitechapel Gallery

The White Cube

The Jerwood Space

The Barbican

The Royal Academy

Workshops at the RCA

The Lisson gallery

Within the department we offer two KS3 clubs (Art, and Words and Images – creative poetry and art), At KS4 &5, Architecture club, Interventions and additional studio time. We run the National ARTiculation Prize for all Year 12 students, a national speaking about art competition run by the National Gallery.