Kingsmead's Cave 

The Arts are fundamental to our ethos and values and core purpose of providing the best education we can for our children. 

The Arts develop vital knowledge, skills and understanding for children, qualities that impact on successful, happy lives. Through developing work in their sketchbooks which travel with them through school, children record, share, revisit their developing knowledge and skills: 

• Procedural knowledge of techniques, for example colour mixing and using paint, materials for drawing and representing 3 dimensions on paper;

• Declarative knowledge where artists and types of art are learned: painters, sculptors and Applied Arts such as design and architecture;

• Tacit knowledge shares children's feelings about their work and the artists and work used as models and inspiration for their own work. 

The Arts are also an important way in which children express and share their understanding of our school ethos and our shared values. 

• We value the Arts in how they bring us together ~ a place where everybody has a part to play, a place where our collective intelligence is greater than that of any individual.

• We value the Arts as unique forms of expression ~ deep thinking, difficult and joyful subjects, made visible and heard through their practical application. 

Ethics and moral purpose and the Arts are no less important than exam results or any other grades children and schools receive. Shared moral purpose and values motivate and sustain our community: colleagues, children and, we hope, the wider Kingsmead community.

Each generation of children who pass through the school, looks at the world differently. Coming from different starting points, the lens shifts and the world appears anew. But not everything changes. 

Our perspective and the values we hold can thought of like being at sea. The seas in which we swim change over time but the rock on which we sit, the values in school, holds fast. Three works below show how the visual arts have interpretted our core mission: to care for ourselves, other people and our environment.

Because, without a deep understanding of our human natures, our moral purpose, our place in our community and in the natural world, we really are 'all at sea.'

Children who wanted to develop their gifts and talents in Art used Renaissance artist Holbein's masterpiece The Ambassadors as inspiration for our work, Caring for Ourselves. We made the tableau and painted the work on an Art Saturday workshop with visiting painter, Maggie Stewart.

Children thought about what it is to be a 'well educated' citizen. They included symbols for the learning they thought is important.