Opportunities for play are essential to a child's development. But as we grow-up purposeful play is often dismissed. Being creative - being able to bring something new and with value into the world - requires a willingness to explore and experiment, to test out expectations and boundaries, to detect new possibilities; to engage with the world with wonder and curiosity. Artists embrace play as a valuable way of understanding the potential of materials, ideas and technologies.
Here at Gosforth Academy Visual Arts Department we encourage our students to play and explore visual, tactile and other sensory experiences to communicate ideas and meanings. They work with traditional and new media, developing confidence, competence, imagination and creativity. We pride ourselves on using a diversity of issues and ideas from which to develop a wide variety of subject specialist skills from. They learn to appreciate and value images and artefacts across times and cultures, and to understand the contexts in which they were made.
Students reflect critically on their own and other people’s work, judging quality, value and meaning. They learn to think and act as artists, craftspeople and designers, working creatively, intelligently and independently.