Art & Design

At TRPA we inspire learning and understanding through our inclusive and creative curriculum, encouraging curiosity and giving our children a life-long love of learning and the knowledge and skills to make the world a better place in the 21st century.  

Our art curriculum is a knowledge rich curriculum. It is designed to enable children to learn by making connections between the work of artists, architects and designers and their own work, which they evaluate and relate back to the works they have studied. The curriculum ensures the children are given meaningful opportunities for self-expression and individual response are woven through the curriculum, giving children space to learn who they are as an artist. The children express themselves through different methods (drawing, painting, sculpture, printing, photography, collage and textiles). The overall curriculum provides for gradual progression in terms of skills introducing the children to as diverse a range of materials as possible. It also provides for progression in terms of knowledge of different concepts and types of art, for example Style in Art and Narrative Painting are studied in year 1, and then revisited in year 2 in History Painting.

The curriculum fulfils the requirements of the National Curriculum for England and seeks to show how art shapes our history and contributes to our culture. It looks at key movements and historical periods in the history of Western art, studying art from ancient Greece and Rome, Anglo Saxon England, the middle-ages, the Italian renaissance and Victorian art and architecture. Where a unit looks at a period in history which is also addressed in the history curriculum, the art unit is taught after the history unit. This allows the children to approach their study of art with a degree of confidence and ‘expertise’ and to consolidate their knowledge by creating connections between the different disciplines.