Art
At St James CE Academy we believe that..
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Art teaching should be aspirational yet accessible. We specialise in creating resources which help all teachers, including non-specialist teachers, to feel confident and enable to deliver inspirational activities to all children. You do not have to be “good at art” to be a great art teacher – you only need to be willing to explore, alongside your pupils, modelling an attitude of curiosity, open-mindedness, creative-risk taking and reflection.
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Our offering to pupils should be broad and rich, contemporary and diverse. By keeping our understanding of all discipline areas (drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture etc) as open as possible we ensure that we keep art as inclusive and accessible to every child.
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Teaching art can and should be as rigorous and disciplined as any other subject. Enabling open-ended creative learning actually requires teachers to understand the structures and spaces pupils need to work to their best.
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That we build skills and knowledge through a combination of opportunities for repeated practice and new projects. Art is subjective and experiential – and there are many types of “knowledge” all of which are best understood when the knowledge is embedded in experience.
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We cannot and should not apply the same metrics to art as to other subjects. Art is a unique subject to teach/facilitate and we should embrace that fact.
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Through enabling pupils to think about the purpose of art and artists to all our lives, we will ensure that as children grow they feel entitled to express and better understand themselves (and the world in which they live) through making and talking about art. Through this creative entitlement we help nurture citizens who feel empowered to help shape community and society for the better.