Art & Design Curriculum

Principles and Purpose of our Art and Design Curriculum

At The Regis school we aim to provide our students with the confidence to both analyse and create Art with meaning, gaining the skills and knowledge they need to express and create their own ideas about the world they live in. Students gain the skills and confidence they need to not only express themselves visually but build important skills such as resilience, problem solving, analytical thinking, creativity, and innovation, giving them skills that are inviable for an ever-changing visual and professional world.

Students are encouraged to visit galleries and museums, both locally and further afield, along with virtually. Art links many parts of culture and life together and is more and more informed by ever changing digital technologies. It is important for students to understand how Art reflects and sometimes provokes questions about the world they live in, exposing them to ideas they may not have considered before. We encourage students to see themselves as artists, that art is not for the ‘elite’.

To enable students to do this we deliver a broad and balanced knowledge, skills and creativity based curriculum. This develops their creativity and ideas, increases proficiency in their execution, develops a critical understanding of artists, architects and designers, whilst enabling students to express reasoned judgements that can inform their own work.

The following principles have informed the planning of our Art curriculum

• Entitlement: Our Art curriculum covers the National Curriculum. We have added to the content covered by the National Curriculum, but we have not removed any content specified in the National Curriculum.    
• Coherence: We sequence our units to introduce knowledge, skills and new ideas in a way that begins with the simplest and builds to the more complex, including a range of skills and concepts developed over time in a variety of contexts.
• Mastery: Reviewing prior skills and knowledge is threaded throughout all the units we teach, with concepts and skills revisited, built upon, and developed in new contexts.
• Adaptability: Whilst all students study the same ambitious curriculum in Art, lessons are adapted to ensure learning is maximised for all students in that class. For example, the extent to which tasks are scaffolded or in re teaching an aspect of knowledge or skill that students have not fully mastered.  
• Representation: A diverse range of artists, designers, themes and concepts are used in resources throughout the curriculum so that students from all backgrounds recognise the relevance of Art learning.
• Education with character: The Art curriculum raises several ethical, culturally significant, or sensitive questions which students will want to explore in ways that go beyond the curriculum. We encourage teachers to respond sensitively to these and use their professional judgement to help students to reflect and have informed opinions on these.

For more information regarding the curriculum content, ‘what we teach, why it is taught and when’ please view our curriculum maps below.

To access additional learning resources to support students learning in Art please refer to Knowledge Organiser (KS3), The Regis SP (KS4) and our primary learning platform Seneca.