Art

We use creativity to animate learning across subjects, developing knowledge and skills through artistic responses and tasks that celebrate innovation and self-expression, and provide exciting and varied ways to approach different subject matter.

We explore art made in diverse contexts, encountering a wider spectrum of stories, histories and ideas in an engaging way. These experiences prompt creative responses from children that develop their understanding of difference through self-reflection that move children beyond more knowledge-based teaching, into a place of empathy. This approach at Horniman allows the arts to support success beyond academic development, and inclusively ensure our children have successful experiences of school in terms of their happiness, self-fulfilment and positive wellbeing.

We use, make and think about art which poses and answers questions. The Arts can be places of enquiry – through exploring skills-based questions, we give children a unique space to experiment and evaluate their work, where there are varied ways to be successful. Through exploring knowledge-based questions we create long-term learning environments which allow children to draw links across subjects and think broadly about the arts and the importance of their social and historical contexts, and how this transfers across the curriculum.

We believe that teaching, creating, thinking about and expressing ourselves through The Arts involves shouldering responsibility for understanding the relevant messages and contexts they sit in. We teach The Arts honestly, and children leave Horniman with an understanding of the politics, stories and connections artistic outputs can convey and equip us with the power to convey ourselves. We are passionate about the environment and sustainability, and this is reflected in our resourcing for The Arts and content of our projects across the subjects.