Being an Art Lead can be exciting but it can also be challenging, especially if your experience in art is limited. Find guidance and information below to help support your role.
The AccessArt Ethos
It’s important that you choose an organisation which has a similar ethos or values to yourself. Here’s what we stand for at AccessArt.
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Before we decide what* and how** we teach within the umbrella of “art”, we should remember why we are teaching art in the first place. At AccessArt we remind everyone that we teach art because it is one way we can enable children to reach their creative potential. Every child is entitled to develop their critical and creative thinking skills, and to build their knowledge and understanding of materials and techniques, developing their experience of how they can make a creative response to a variety of stimulus, and our role as teachers is to facilitate this journey. So for AccessArt, remembering our core aim is to enable creativity, we place an emphasis on encouraging exploratory journeys, working towards varied and individual outcomes.
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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.
What* – As guided by the National Curriculum for Art & Design
How** – As inspected by Ofsted
Curriculum Support
We offer two main ways to help you develop a broad, rich, contemporary and diverse creative curriculum…
Explore all Planning a Creative Curriculum resources…
The accessart primary art curriculum
CPD & Events
AccessArt offers CPD designed to inspire and enable. Explore these recordings aimed at Art Leads in Primary schools…
Explore our upcoming Zoom CPD program
Find recordings of past Zoom CPD
Exploring painting for art leads in primary schools
Exploring drawing for art leads in primary schools
Exploring sculpture for art leads in primary schools
Progression
Unlike in many other subjects, there is no given sequencing in art. Explore the following resources to help you think about Progression in Primary Art…
Explore all Progression and Assessment resources here.
A clear progression of knowledge and skills
what shape is progression?
rethinking our approach to assessment
Pedagogy
Schools should consider teaching Art & Design at Key Stage 1 and 2 as a distinct subject. Whilst we appreciate many schools approach art in a project or theme-based manner, our experience is that when art is taught as a distinct subject in a skills-based manner there is clearer progression and the teaching and learning is more rigorous. We do appreciate that art provides an excellent way to enrich the curriculum and link to other curriculum areas. Links to themes or projects can still be made, but from a position of far greater strength and understanding.
That schools work hard to break down preconceptions amongst teachers and pupils as to what drawing or sculpture (for example) is or might be. Preconceptions can stifle creativity. If we take the lid off art and design we can allow the subject to flourish. Experimentation, risk, and innovation should be encouraged.
Art is a large subject area and you cannot possibly cover everything – its for you to decide as a school what you teach whilst meeting the aims of the national curriculum. Elements such an exploration of line, colour, form shape etc are woven throughout the disciplines. It might be helpful to think about subject areas as being: Drawing, Sketchbooks, Printmaking, Sculpture, Painting, Collage, Textiles, and Digital.
Schools should be less focused on outcome and more focused on the creative journey. When schools work towards a predefined, prescribed outcome (i.e. in the case of a display) the understanding and learning of pupils can be compromised. Ofsted recognises that work which looks great at first glance can often hide poor learning outcomes. Instead schools should work to create confident, independent artists who can articulate and value their own creative journeys.
We suggest that each term children should be given the opportunity to explore a variety of polarities:
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Traditional skills should be balanced with experimental work
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Small scale work should be balanced with large scale work
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Quiet reflective study should be balanced with active, dynamic work
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Individual work should be balanced with group work
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Two dimensional work should be balanced with three dimensional work
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Study of historical “great” artists should be balanced with contemporary artists
In addition children should be given the opportunity to experience:
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How it feels to take creative risks as opposed to playing it safe
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That chaos and mess can be productive for some people
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A diverse range of creative role models (including visits from artists/visits to galleries/artists studios)
Pedagogy in 250 Words animations
All pedagogy articles
Getting Started…
For many schools, an ongoing exploration of materials will provide an accessible and effective starting point. This exploration (of materials used for drawing, sculpture, painting, printmaking etc) will help the children grow in confidence and understanding and promote self-directed learning. Manipulating materials helps children explore processes, and these in turn can be applied to concepts. Many of the resources in the subject areas (see links above or below) centre around an exploration of materials and processes.
You might want to consider:
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A whole-school activity. For example, all year groups might explore charcoal. Each class and individuals within the class will naturally explore at his or her own level. Fundamental exercises can be experienced by all ages, and repeated by all ages, as part of their practice. There is no need for a “progression of activity” as such – children will naturally progress once they have repeated access to a material, process or concept.
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Pupils or teachers sharing areas of expertise with other classes to build knowledge and confidence within the school.
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That teachers should not be afraid to be seen to be learning alongside the children – in fact this can be a very positive role model for children.