Welcome to the Art Department.

In this short introduction to the department, we will introduce why we think a sound Art Education is so important to a student's development.
We will talk about our philosophy and how this philosophy is put into action in the curriculum.
We will take a quick overview of the three Key Stages.
Hopefully this will give you some idea of where we are coming from.
….and we promise not to use the term ‘in pursuit of excellence’!

Art Education at Kenilworth should:

-be stimulating and enjoyable, for both students and staff.
-develop the student creatively, intellectually, practically and socially and make a real contribution to a rounded development of the individual student.
-deliver a broad based curriculum and provide broad educational opportunities for our students
-have high expectations and expect a high rate of academic success.

Accommodation and Facilities

Leyes Lane

At Leyes Lane the art department is clustered in a suite of 5 rooms: four general art rooms (one with specialist ceramic facilities) and one graphics/ICT area.

Castle Sixth Form Centre

The art department is situated in a cluster of rooms, centred around a large art studio. The atmosphere here is very similar to that of an art college. Students have their own studio space and use the rooms both in and outside of normal lesson times. The facilities dictate a very strong fine-art bias, although there are some darkroom and ICT provision.

Curriculum Overview

Each stage of the curriculum is split into three Units.
Unit 1: Deals with Visual Language (how we understand what we see), basic skills, skill and creative responses with media and techniques.
Unit 2: Deals with knowledge and understanding of art. This unit also deals with developing the student’s own ideas, feelings and artistic responses.
Unit 3: Fuses Unit 1 and Unit 2 to look more at how these skills, ideas and understandings combine in the development of a complex art project. This area looks at the application of skills, ideas and knowledge, and the process of developing successful work. At GCSE, AS and A2, this Unit dovetails nicely with the externally set exam.

By the end of each Key Stage, students should have developed:
Visual Literacy
Practical skills in a range of media
Expressive and creative responses
Knowledge of a range of artists from different times and cultures, and an understanding of how this knowledge develops their own unique artistic ‘voice’.
Study skills - from simple listening skills, though to the complex skills of independent research and resourcing, experimentation and analysis needed to develop a coherent unit of work.
Each Key Stage represents a deeper and more complex level in these basic concepts