The visual arts
Art is a way of making and communicating meaning through imagery. It is a unique symbolic domain and is a discipline with its own particular demands and core of learning. Art is a natural and enjoyable way of extending and enriching the child's experience of the world.
Visual arts activities enable the child to make connections between the imaginative life and the world and to organise and express ideas, feelings and experiences in visual, tangible form. In drawing, painting, constructing and inventing, the child assimilates and responds to experience and tries to make sense of it.
Visual arts education provides for creative and aesthetic experiences through exploring, investigating, experimenting, inventing, designing and making in a range of media. It promotes observation and ways of seeing and helps the child to acquire sensitivity to the visual, spatial and tactile world and to aesthetic experience. Visual arts education channels the child's natural curiosity for educational ends: the development of percptual awareness helps the child to enjoy and interpret the visual environment and art works and can facilitate learning in all areas of the curriculum. Creative achievements in art contribute to a sense of personal identity and self-esteem and help to create cultural awareness and empathy.
The visual arts curriculum
The curriculum suggests the following as accessible media for expression through which the child can explore, respond to and interpret the world
visually:
- Drawing
- Paint and colour
- Print
- Clay
- Construction
- Fabric and fibre.
Drawing
Drawing is an instinctive way for the child to communicate understanding, feelings and his/her imaginative life. The developing child quite naturally invents symbols to represent the human figure, animals and a variety of observed objects. Later, the need to progress beyond repeated symbols and to express a growing sense of individuality becomes apparent. Developing the ability to look with curiosity and concentration at qualities of line, rhythm, texture and colour and tone in the child's surroundings and in the work of artists is essential to developing drawing potential and enjoyment. Drawing has particular importance in the curriculum.
Paint and colour
Paint is an ideal medium for developing the child's sensitivity to colour, because it is fluid and its effects are immediate. It is important to explore the expressive and descriptive effects of a variety of colour media and to encourage adventurous use. Colour awareness promotes sensitivity to an enjoyment of colour in the child's surroundings and is further enhanced when the child has opportunities to look at the work of artists.
Print
Print-making extends the child's range of expression. Print-making activities provide additional opportunities for developing awareness of the interrelationships between shapes and colours and the impact they can have, and for experimenting with pattern. They also draw attention to the use of print in everyday objects and help to expand understanding of the image-making processes in evidence in the child's surroundings.
Clay
Clay is a versatile medium for free imaginative expression. Children begin to understand its inherent possibilities for three-dimensional expression as they model with it and change it. The plastic, malleable nature of clay makes it an ideal medium for learning about form. Every child should have opportunities to see and if possible to handle or touch craft pottery and sculpture.
Papier m‰chŽ is also an accessible medium for expressing ideas in three - dimensional form. It complements work in clay and is an additional way of exploring form, particularly useful on a large scale.
Construction
Construction activities with a variety of three-dimensional materials can help the child to become more spatially aware, can encourage inventiveness and can help to promote sensitivity to structure in the immediate and wider environments. The child can draw inspiration from a range of sources, which would include everyday household items, street furniture, local architecture and public sculpture .
Fabric and fibre
Fabric and fibre are adaptable and enjoyable media for creativity and are materials in which the child can explore, invent and design at all levels. Their structures, textures, patterns and colours can inspire ideas and present opportunities for creative expression. They can also be used to reinforce understanding of colour and tone, shape, texture, pattern and rhythm. As the child gains confidence in handling the materials, they can be used in more complex ways. Their use can also give the child insights into traditional crafts and contemporary design, including fashion.
Complementary media
The strands outlined above may be complemented by work in other media, such as photography, film and video or computer graphics, but a balance should be maintained between activities in two and three-dimensional media.
The visual elements
The visual arts activities suggested for the different media help to develop sensitivity to qualities of line, shape, form, colour and tone, texture, pattern and rhythm and spatial organisation, and enable the child to use them purposefully. These qualities are both the elements of the visual world and the language of artistic communication, and attention should be drawn to them informally and in context throughout primary schooling. The terms "visual elements" and "elements of art" are used interchangeably. Terms that may be unfamiliar are explained in the glossary.
Linkage and integration
Integrated learning is an important aspect of primary education. Well planned, integrated topics provide a variety of contexts for developing concepts and skills and are added opportunities for creativity and inventiveness. They would include visual arts activities that incorporate a number of media (linkage), as well as cross-curricular activities. In the latter, different subject areas interact with rather than subsume each other and their objectives are clearly defined (integration). Suggested activities for linkage and integration are indicated at the end of each strand. A balance should be maintained, however, between integrated and single-subject teaching, especially in senior classes.
Language and visual arts education
Language is such a universal influence in the teaching and learning process, in every curriculum area, that particular examplars of its integration with visual arts education are not given in the curriculum. Language is a way for the child to name and classify things, to express and modify ideas, to formulate questions and hypotheses, to enunciate conclusions and judgements, to access and retrieve information and through language development, he/she acquires a vocabulary with which to perform these tasks. In this way, language helps to clarify ideas and expand the child's conceptual framework. In visual arts education, language is vitally important in stimulating ideas and recalling experiences so that they are vividly present as he/she tries to express them visually. Being able to talk about art is also an essential part of the child's development in art. It should therefore be a consistent concern in planning and implementing the visual arts programme.
Assessment
Assessment, as in other areas of the curriculum, is an integral part of teaching and learning in the visual arts. The section on assessment outlines how a range of assessment techniques can enrich the learning experience of the child and provide useful information for teachers, parents and others.8
Information and communication technologies
Information and communication technologies can be used to broaden and enhance the child's understanding and experience of art. Computer art programs that are soundly based on the principles of visual arts education offer additional supportive means of expression, communication and design. CD-ROMs produced by some museums and galleries provide for interactive exploration of their collections and are particularly useful, and some collections can be accessed on the internet. Schools can set up their own web sites and through them can share information about their art activities with other schools. They can also communicate by e-mail.
Aims
The aims of the visual arts curriculum are
- to help the child develop sensitivity to the visual, spatial and tactile world, and to provide for aesthetic experience
- to help the child express ideas, feelings and experiences in visual and tactile forms to enable the child to have enjoyable and purposeful experiences of different art media and to have opportunities to explore, experiment, imagine, design, invent and communicate with different art materials
- to promote the child's understanding of and personal response to the creative processes involved in making two and three-dimensional art
- to enable the child to develop the skills and techniques necessary for expression, inventiveness and individuality
- to enable the child to experience the excitement and fulfilment of creativity and the achievement of potential through art activities
- to foster sensitivity towards and enjoyment and appreciation of the visual arts
- to provide opportunities for the child to explore how the work of artists and craftspeople might relate to his/her own work.
Broad objectives
When due account is taken of intrinsic abilities and varying circumstances, the visual arts curriculum should enable the child to
- look at, enjoy and make a personal response to a range of familiar and unfamiliar objects and images in the environment, focusing on their visual attributes
- explore and begin to develop sensitivity to qualities of line, shape, colour and tone, texture, pattern and rhythm, spatial organisation and the three-dimensional quality of form
- express ideas, feelings and experiences in visual form and with imagination, enjoyment and a sense of fulfilment
- experiment in spontaneous, imaginative and increasingly structured ways with a range of art materials, including pencils, paints, crayons, chalks, markers, inks, clay, papier m‰chŽ, fabric and fibre, and construction materials
- explore the expressive and design possibilities of the materials within a range of two and three-dimensional media, including drawing, paint and colour, print, clay, construction, fabric and fibre
- apply skills and techniques, demonstrating increasing sensitivity to the visual elements in his/her art work
- look with curiosity and openness at the work of a wide range of artists and craftspeople explore atmosphere, content and impact in the work of artists, especially when they relate to his/her own work
- identify a variety of visual ar ts media and describe some of the creative processes involved
- develop an ability to identify and discuss what he/she considers the most important design elements of individual pieces, especially when they relate to work in hand 10
- discuss the preferred design elements in his/her work and in the work of classmates
- begin to appreciate the context in which great art and artefacts are created and the culture from which they grow
- respond to visual arts experiences in a variety of imaginative ways
- use appropriate language in responding to visual arts experiences.