Continuing our celebration of Arts Award Discover on the blog throughout March, Ali Gallacher, Art Teacher at Brooklands Farm Primary School in Milton Keynes, tells us about their delivery of Discover as an extra-curricular offer as part of their weekly art clubs.
Our school is very passionate about the arts and our Artsmark journey has enabled us to ensure that we encompass as many art experiences as we can for as many children to experience as possible. This is no mean feat as we are the largest primary school in Milton Keynes with 1,300 pupils across two sites.
Through our art and design curriculum we embrace the Artsmark Quality Principles: Striving for excellence and innovation, being authentic, exciting, inspiring and engaging, ensuring a positive and inclusive experience, actively involving children, enabling personal progression, and developing belonging and ownership. We have created online Art Sites which we teach from (anywhere, any place, any time) that are accessed through our school website. The support from Artswork and other local arts organisations has been invaluable in helping us to achieve the Gold Artsmark Award and deliver Arts Award Discover.
We enable the children to access Arts Award Discover during our weekly art clubs (lunchtime and after school), which are organised by teachers with subject expertise.
In our art clubs we make suggestions for creative activities but ultimately the children decide what they would like to create. Questionnaires completed by the Key Stage 2 art club children confirm this: ‘We were excited when we could do what we wanted and use our own ideas’ and ‘When I started off, I felt a bit weird but then I thought I was an artist, it was amazing!’. Our pupils love to discover and create during their art club sessions – it might be a new technique, a new artist, a new idea - sometimes they never quite know where it might take them!
Discover
Through our local and national partnerships, we are able to offer the children activities that get them excited about creating art. We embrace competitions, invite artists into the clubs and visit art locally. For Part A, the art club children continue to learn about seven master techniques from their weekly curriculum art lessons: drawing, painting, collage, textiles, digital media, print and sculpture. The resources are provided for them and they choose their technique. One of these is usually modelled by either a teacher, a visitor or another child in the art club. They often use these techniques to create art for school displays and performances (props and backdrops).
Find out
For Part B, the children attending art club have already discovered artists through their weekly curriculum art lessons (which includes an online meeting in Year 3 with a New York collage artist, a Surrealist lesson in Year 4 with a professional artist and a presentation from a London architect in Year 5). In art club sessions we have visits from parents who are artists, we visit artist studios to meet working artists and discover artists through our visits to MK Gallery, the Westbury Arts Centre and our local secondary school.
Share
Our pupils love to share what they enjoyed and learnt from doing their Arts Award Discover (Part C). The children’s art is shared on our school website and social media platforms. They present it to their peers in an assembly when they receive their certificates. We use their art in displays around the school and encourage them to share it with their friends and family. We have an annual art exhibition which showcases the art club art with our school community. The children love to bring their relatives and friends to this event to celebrate their creations.
Exploring the local area
The children have also learnt about how art is used in public places and communities. An art trail at Milton Keynes Central Library encouraged them to be art detectives, to think about the artist’s intention and the way it is viewed by the public. Singing and offering art creations to the residents of a care home enabled the children to share their joy of the arts with others. We plan to visit MK University Hospital to see the impact of the arts on wellbeing and also Brooklands Health Centre as the art club children have created artwork to be displayed there.
Competitions
We receive bulletins and newsletters from local and national partners about competitions we can enter and opportunities to showcase our pupils’ talents.
The art clubs have taken part in ‘The Joy of Older Life’ competition organised by Age UK Milton Keynes. We were delighted that two of our art club children were included in the ‘Top 10 Finalists’.
Every year, our art clubs participate in the ‘MK Open’ art competition for schools which is organised by the Westbury Arts Centre. One of our art club children won second prize in her year group category. We decided to celebrate all of the entries with an in-school competition. All the children across the school voted for their favourite entry. We were able to award first, second and third prizes with professional art resources which had been donated to us.
Discover more
We are now aiming to celebrate more of our children’s achievements with Arts Award Discover through all of the arts, not just visual arts. For example, during the artist led performance sessions, the ‘Young Voices’ choir, the ‘Strictly’ dancing club and the music lessons that take place each week.
Arts Award Discover acknowledges and celebrates the creative achievements of our amazing art club artists. One pupil said, ‘It's kind of like getting my creativity flowing, it’s fun because you can design, it helps us remember stuff, makes me feel calm and happy…!’.
Photo: Brooklands Farm Primary School, Art entries for 'The Joy of Older Life' Age UK exhibition
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