Art
Art and the Arts are embraced, celebrated and encouraged at Salusbury School. We have our own Art room, Kiln and specialist Art teacher who teaches across all year including Nursery. At Salusbury we explore all forms of art and use many different medium.
Each half term children work on a new project linked to their humanities topic, whilst incorporating work with a range of art materials. This includes working with; pencil, pastels, paint, college, colouring, recycled sculpture, clay, charcoal, plaster, papier mache and much more. We follow the National Curriculum and add the Salusbury sparkle to make every project a new experience that continues to develop their artistic skills.
Throughout each topic we introduce different artists or art movements from throughout history that connect to the subject they are exploring. This helps to embed the information learnt in other subjects.
Arts Mark and Arts Award Centre
We are a Platinum Arts Mark School as well as an Arts Award centre. To achieve this honour our school has embraced the arts in every form for many years. As a school we recognise that creativity is an integral part of every child’s rounded education. It not only gives them the ability to think outside the box it also encourages creativity in most other subjects.
How is Art Taught?
At Salusbury every child has a sketch book that they take with them all the way up through to Year Six. In the sketch book they practice new techniques with materials such as water colour, pencil shading, texture making, colour mixing, pastel drawing and charcoal sketching. This gives them references to look back on and use as they go through the. It also ensures the skills are embedded and are used when producing their final pieces of art work. All finished pieces work are done on paper (or in 3 dimensions) so they can be displayed around the school.
The key skills we teach in Art are:
- Using resources to research ideas
- Identifying changes in art throughout history and connecting this to artists and art movements.
- Learning creative techniques
- Using different medium ie: pencil, pastels, paint, collage, printing, ceramics, plaster and charcoal.
- Art and creative Vocabulary
Arts week
Every year we have an Arts week with a different theme. Previous themes have included flight, animals, circus and land art. With every theme we incorporate Gallery visits or trips to parks, zoo’s or invite workshops to our school. The children then spend the week creating work inspired by their experiences.
This huge painting is a Year 6 project inspired by David Hockney
Art competitions
During your child’s time at Salusbury they will get the opportunities to enter lots of Art competitions within school as well as prestigious competitions like The 4th Plinth and the Royal Academy Summer Show for schools. As a school we have won 'Best in Brent' for two years for the 4th plinth schools competition.
Adapting to COVID-19
We continued to embrace the arts school with the Keyworker provision and at home by setting lots of art projects that included;
NHS medals, rainbows and posters, animated art lessons on YouTube as well as art set by the teachers on Google classroom.
Last summer we also filmed our year 6 production and streamed it live for everyone to see at home. This year we are hoping to go back to live performances (even if it has to be outdoors!)