Art and Design
Introduction
Head of Department: Mr Richard Keag
Teaching Staff:
Mrs Rose McGuiggan
Technical Staff:
Mrs Tracey Bradley
All students study Art and Design throughout Key Stage 3 at St Columbanus College.
Art and Design, Drama and Music provide important opportunities to develop young people’s practical, exploratory, expressive, design and problem-solving skills at a level appropriate to their age, maturity and physical dexterity. The strands share a number of overlapping concepts and skills relating to creativity and expression, analysing and interpreting observations and experiences and the communication of ideas, thoughts and feelings.
Your child will have opportunities to develop their own personal and creative responses by:
- researching, gathering and interpreting information from direct experiences, observations, memory, imagination and a range of traditional and digital sources.
- developing an appreciation of the work of artists, designers and craft workers from their own and other cultures, past and present.
- developing creative thinking skills and personal creative outcomes through investigating, realising, designing and making.
- drawing and graphic media.
- printmaking.
- textiles.
- ceramics.
- 3-dimensional construction or prototyping.
- lens based and digital media.
- using the visual elements with understanding when engaging in art and design.
- evaluating and appreciating their own and others’ work through discussion and reflection.
Subject Information
Key Stage 3
Mission Statement: The Art Department’s mission is to provide students with a comprehensive and in-depth study in the visual arts. The Revised art curriculum recognizes the value and merits of both Western and non-Western art traditions and their impact on the evolution of human experience. Students are to consider their work in the context of an increasingly global society. Students develop an understanding of aesthetics, critical and conceptual thinking, visual literacy and technical Expertise in a creative and stimulating learning environment. The art curriculum prepares students to become disciplined and professional artists, art educators, creative problem solvers and critical thinkers equipped for the 21st century.
Year 8 Art and Design
Sweetie Painting Project: Teaches the students the basics of visual communication, looking at colour theory and painting techniques.
Year 9 Art and Design
Giacometti Project, looking at other practitioners work and using that to inform their ideas. These ideas are realised in the form of a sculpture using wore and Modroc.
Year 10 Art and Design
Manga Art: Pupils research the contextual origins of Manga Art. They are then taught Manga techniques which they use to work collaboratively to produce their own comic strip telling the story of an earthquake. This is a collaborative unit with Geography, in which pupils will learn about the different stages of an earthquake.
Key Stage 4
The Art Department offers CCEA GCSE Art and Design and GCE (A Level) Art and Design. Click here for further information.
Exam Success Rate:
On average the pupils are achieving nearly a grade above what they have been predicted. We hope to see this trend continue and develop.
Examples of Students work:
Departmental News
True Colours exhibition
The pupils of Key Stage 4 -5 enjoy the experience of going around the True Colours Exhibition, an exhibition presenting the top Art and Design work in Northern Ireland. This provides the pupils with inspiration and ideas for future projects.
Seacourt Print Workshop
The AS level pupils enjoyed a day at Seacourt Printing Studio. There they were involved in Dry Point printing techniques. A very beneficial day when developing work for their portfolios.
Ulster Folk and Transport Museum
The pupils of Key stage 4-5 enjoyed a day at the museum collect visual information that would be the basis of their Art and Design project.