Head of Department: Miss A Crook

Our Aim

Art at Priestlands is highly valued in school and in the wider community. Our excellent results reflect the department’s commitment to teaching a broad range of art skills, our positive impact through cross-curricular links, and whole school displays. We deliver an exciting and varied curriculum and encourage our students to take pride in their work.

We pride ourselves on our wide range of teacher based skills that allow our students to explore their ideas creatively using diverse outcomes. We offer drawing, printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, painting, art specific ICT skills and Photography.

We aim to promote independence through exciting projects that cater for all abilities. Our projects introduce students to both traditional and contemporary artists, designers, and photographers from a range of cultures. We explore ourselves and the world around us as visual starting points and encourage students to analyse and engage with each other when developing their artistic and cultural experiences.

We deliver weekly art clubs which allow students time to work independently on class work or homework and afterschool masterclasses where students have the opportunity to learn exciting skills and techniques in an environment that stretches and challenges them.

Facilities

The Art Department is housed in a beautiful listed building, the Gurney Dixon. There are three teaching rooms and a computer room for Photography and each art room is also equipped with computers. The department has two printing presses which allows us to experiment with a wide range of processes including collagraph, monoprinting, dry point etching and lino printing. We also have recently invested in a number of silk screens. The department is well equipped for ceramics, with four potter’s wheels, two kilns and a glaze room.

Key Stage 3

At Key Stage 3, we follow structured schemes of work that provide the basic building blocks that you need in any art discipline. We aim for all students to have the opportunity to experiment with a range of skills, techniques and processes across projects such as Formal Elements, Landscape, Portraiture and working Three Dimensionally. We set home study projects where students have the opportunity to develop a mini project across a number of tasks.

Key Stage 4

At GCSE we run three courses; Fine Art, Three Dimensional Art and Photography. Students follow teacher led projects in Year 10 which give them the confidence and skills they need to start to develop their mock exam project and later their externally set task.

In Year 11 teachers facilitate students’ journeys and guide them using our extensive knowledge and expertise. An example of themes or project starting points are; Natural/Manmade, Masks, Sea-life and Portraiture. Students will normally complete two projects which comprise 60% of their final grade. The exam paper, referred to as the Externally Set Assignment makes up the remaining 40%. For the externally set assignment students develop a project and outcomes based on their chosen starting point.