All children across the school are actively encouraged to explore and embrace a wide variety of art and design techniques, skills and media. Through half-termly projects, class trips, school-wide celebrations, lunchtime art activities and the Kapow Art and Design Technology curriculum, pupils are given meaningful opportunities to express themselves and build confidence in their own artistic creativity.

Kapow’s Art and DT curriculum intends to nurture pupils’ creativity, imagination and visual literacy, encouraging them to think like artists, designers and engineers. Not only will they receive opportunities to generate and build upon their own innovation, but also to problem solve and evaluate theirs as well as others’ artworks or products.

This curriculum is implemented through manageable, well-sequenced units selected by teachers to complement and enhance cross-curricular learning. For example, Year 3’s Prehistoric Painting unit links closely with their History focus on Prehistoric Britain. Each unit includes clear guidance on scaffolding learning for pupils with SEND, and Kapow’s spiral curriculum ensures that key knowledge, skills and vocabulary are revisited and embedded throughout a child’s primary school journey.

The impact of the Kapow Art and DT curricula is evident not only through the high-quality of work produced by pupils and their ability to discuss different artistic and design techniques, but also is demonstrated through their knowledge of unit quizzes. These assessments support teachers in tracking progress and planning next steps to further develop pupils’ artistic education.

Beyond the classroom, children at St Thomas Becket regularly take part in creative projects for school productions and whole-school celebrations such as Music and Art Week. Previous opportunities have included participation in the National Gallery’s Take One Picture competition. More recently, pupils have collaborated with local community artists from Norwood JunkAction to create artwork from litter collected in the local area. We have also worked closely with our parish community to design and create a stunning mosaic celebrating the 100th anniversary of our parish.