The umbrella of ‘the arts’ covers a wide range of creative media, practices, professions, and cultural experiences. In our programmes, we break this down to help children gain a greater understanding of the many roles in the art world.
Completed ‘What are the ARTS?’ journal page.
As well as journals, our programmes include artist question and answer sessions so that children can ask lots of questions about the journey to becoming a professional in the art world. Tasmin, Maureen and I have worked together to create a teacher resource to accompany this and get classes thinking. Aimed at years 2 and up, and with discussion prompts for different levels and abilities, this resource, called ‘What are the arts?’, will help to demystify what the arts are and help pupils gain an even greater understanding of roles within the art world.
Across all of Delight’s programmes, the children have the option to take part in Arts Award Discover and complete a corresponding journal. After a class discussion, children complete their ‘What are the arts?’ journal page and use this as part of their evidence for their Discover award. This page is vital as it helps show their understanding of how different art forms can connect to their own lives.
Creating the resource
We found the process of creating this resource really great and have even learnt lots ourselves. Crafting the definitions was especially interesting as we wanted to be as clear and concise as possible while maintaining true meaning – this caused a lot of debate! Many hours of work have gone into the making of this resource, including original illustrations and definitions, image sourcing, designing, and research.
Example slides.
We have kept the presentation simple and image-based so it is easily digestible, and our intention is for it to be mainly used as a visual tool with prompts to help guide discussion in class. The interactive presentation can be used as a stand-alone lesson or to aid with other learning.
We would like the arts to be accessible to all. This resource is available online here and can also be found via the Accessibility page on our website.
The presentation can be viewed in chronological order using arrow buttons or alternatively, you can click through to specific art forms from the second slide. Due to this being an online resource it sometimes needs a moment to load fully.
Have you used this presentation in your lesson? We would love your feedback!
Contact us at info@delightcharity.org.uk