The Arts
Welcome to 'The Arts' webpage. At Sutton Green we are committed to promoting the arts and providing opportunities for children to experience a wide range of art forms, both within the school day and extra-curricularly. As well as the arts subjects covered in the National Curriculum (Art and Design and Music), we also strive to include art forms such as drama and dance, both performance and audience participation. This is through partnerships with Amasing, The Drama Hut, Shadazzle, Theatre Porto, M&M productions and partnerships with local schools.
Art and Design
Intent Statement
At Sutton Green Primary School, our intention is to provide exciting, memorable and quality art and design activities that have the Arts Council England's seven quality principles threaded through and teaches the skills set out in the National Curriculum and EYFS Development Matters Curriculum. Our bespoke topic-based curriculum fully covers the National Society for Education in Art and Design's progression competencies. We intend to inspire children and develop their confidence to experiment and invent their own works of art. We intend to give children opportunities to develop their ability, nurture their talent and interests, express their ideas and thoughts about the world, as well as becoming familiar with art and artists of different cultures and across time.
Implementation
Art and Design is timetabled for alternative half-terms to allow quality time for subject preparation, implementation and assessment. Resources required for the Art and Design topics are identified by the subject lead and Art and Design practitioners and ordered ready for each topic.
Our Art curriculum embeds strands throughout, which are:
- Generating ideas
- Using sketchbooks
- Makings skills, including formal elements (line, shape, tone, texture, pattern, colour)
- Knowledge of artists
- Evaluating and analysing
Our curriculum allows children to build on their skills and knowledge, applying them to a range of outcomes. The formal elements, a key part of the national curriculum, are also woven throughout the topics. Key skills are revisited again and again with increasing complexity in a spiral curriculum model. This allows pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. Units in each year group are organised into four core areas:
- Drawing
- Painting and mixed-media
- Sculpture and 3D
- Craft and design
The curriculum fully scaffolds and supports age appropriate sequenced learning, creativity and independent outcomes are robustly embedded into the units, supporting children to make their own creative choices and decisions, so that their art outcomes, whilst still being knowledge-rich, are unique to the pupils. Our art and design lessons are always practical and encourage children's exploration.
To raise the profile of Art and Design (as part of the Arts umbrella), we have an annual 'Arts Week', last held in June 2026. During our ‘Arts Weeks’, activities have included an arts assembly, ‘dress as an artist day’, exploring art careers sessions for upper KS2 and the whole school making of scarecrows, contributing to the Little Sutton Scarecrow Festival.
We take up opportunities to work with the community on arts projects and our Year 5 children have taken part in the Dot Art Competition and the Year 3 children have worked with the local theatre company Theatre Porto to create flags and sculpture for their ‘Through the Eyes of Children’ exhibition.
Other community arts projects that we have recently been involved in include the ‘Design a Pin’ for Ten Pin. We also annually design a duck on behalf of Innospec for the Chester Duck Race! We invited children to make up their own designs and the winner took part in creating the duck. We work in partnerships with other schools and have sent individual children to take part in art workshops at a local primary school and high school.
To promote Art and Design we provide art opportunities extra-curricularly; these clubs are based on children's interests and have included drawing club, colouring club, model making, creative club, recycling for art club and arts and crafts club.
The Art and Design subject lead, Mrs Richards has completed the 'Leading the Arts' professional development course with Curious Minds, the Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. Our school is registered as an Arts Award Centre and Mrs Richards is a qualified Arts Award assessor. This gives us the opportunity to work towards our Arts Award Discover level, which is a national qualification resulting in a certificate from Trinity College London. To achieve this the children create a personal 'art log' of experiences showing evidence of taking part in arts activities, researching artists or craftspeople and their work and sharing their arts discoveries.
Sutton Green is taking on the Cultural Education Challenge. This means that our learning journey takes us to places where we can create, compose, perform, visit, experience, participate, know, understand and review great art and culture. Along the way, we meet inspiring artists and cultural experts that help us explore our own and others’ inventiveness. Together we inspire each other to be creative, courageous and curious - www.theculturehub.online. So far we have achieved three cultural education challenge stickers - for Artsmark Award Silver, Leading the Arts in Your School CPD and Arts Award Centre.
Impact
Through our Art and Design curriculum children are involved in the evaluation, discussion and decision making about the quality of their outcomes and identify any improvements they need to make. This will allow children to retain facts and key information about art, as well as talking confidently about their learning.
Children will be assessed by practitioners during lessons and end of unit assessments will be uploaded to the Insight tracking system termly and data collated by the Arts Lead for data analysis and identification of next steps.
Our children will be familiar with a wide range of art forms and techniques and have the confidence and creativity to apply these in their work. They have the ability to discuss, compare and evaluate their art work and the works of others. When they leave our school they will have a strong foundation for their Art and Design learning at Key Stage 3 and beyond.
The expected impact through our art curriculum is that children will:
- Produce creative work, exploring and recording their ideas and experiences.
- Be proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques.
- Evaluate and analyse creative works using subject-specific language.
- Know about great artists and the historical and cultural development of their art.
- Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the national curriculum for Art and design.
Good arts websites for use at home:
https://artfulparent.com/activities/kids-arts-and-crafts-activities/
Music
Intent Statement
At Sutton Green, it is our intent to provide children with exciting and memorable musical experiences both in class and as a whole school and extra-curricularly, which have the Arts Council England's seven quality principles threaded through. We teach the skills set out in the National Curriculum and EYFS Development Matters.
Implementation
In music we follow the Charanga programme, which ensures progression of music skills throughout the year groups and provides interesting and practical musical activities. Our children are taught skills of singing, performance, pulse and rhythm, composition, notation, music appreciation, listening and significant people. Our Year 5 brass instrument tuition provides additional musical opportunities for our children and through our Charanga subscription we have access to songs and music which we can use to complement our topics. In addition, through our links with The Love Music Trust and Amasing, we offer opportunities for children to take part in concerts, showcases and workshops.
We provide our children with the experience of listening to a wide range of music in special assemblies and class times. We regularly take up musical opportunities within our local community, including taking part in Amasing online singing/dancing sessions and concerts. For the past two years we have welcomed a visit from a local drumming teacher who has provided whole school workshops. We are also proud to offer our Year 5s the opportunity to sing in a professional theatre as part of our partnership with a local high school.
Here at Sutton Green, we provide parent-paid Music Tuition through Musicly. We offer tuition in guitar, piano, ukulele, drums and vocals during the school day. Additionally, through our extra-curricular clubs, we offer music based activities which vary throughout the year; these have included our very popular inclusive school choir, drum club and ukulele club. Every year we hold an Arts Week, during which we enjoy activities such as whole school drumming and wrapping workshops.
Impact
Our children are confident with the music skills taught and can apply these in their own work. They have the ability to discuss, compare and evaluate their music pieces and the works of others.
Recommended website - www.classicsforkids.com
Choir
At Sutton Green we are proud to have our own inclusive and very popular school choir. The choir takes part in a variety of events throughout the year, such as the Amasing Concert (held at the Chester Cathedral this year) and singing at our school fayres. The most important quality that we ask from our choir members is enthusiasm and lots of practise at home.