At Olney Middle School, we believe that high-quality Art lessons will inspire children to think innovatively and develop creative procedural understanding. Our Art curriculum is ambitious and provides children with opportunities to develop their skills using a range of media and materials. Children learn the skills of drawing, painting, printing, collage, textiles and 3D work and are given the opportunity to explore and evaluate different creative ideas. Children will be introduced to a range of works and develop knowledge of the styles and vocabulary used by a diverse range of artists. The skills they acquire are applied to their cross-curricular topics, allowing children to use their art skills to reflect on and explore topics in greater depth; for example, by sketching historical artefacts in detail. During some tasks, children are encouraged to work cooperatively to produce artwork and it is paramount that artwork be purposeful; be this as a means of expression or to explore the styles of other artists that inspire our own work. Children should be clear what the intended outcomes are and have a means to measure their own work against this encouraging their resilience. In Art, children are expected to be reflective and evaluate their work, thinking about how they can make changes and keep improving and this is evidenced in their sketch books which the children build on over the time they attend our school. Children are encouraged to take risks and experiment and then reflect on why some ideas and techniques are successful or not for a particular project.