“Creativity is intelligence having fun” – Albert Einstein

The Creative department at Birkdale High School believe that all children should be entitled to experience a wide range of creative opportunities, to develop their creativity and ideas and increase proficiency in their execution. As a department we must nurture all students’ creative talents and seek opportunities for them to develop as individuals and achieve their maximum potential; regardless of their starting points. Alongside literacy and numeracy, the skills of creativity and performance which are intrinsic to our subjects are essential lifelong skills. The Creative industry is fast developing and creative people are highly sought after in the world of work, it is our job at Birkdale not only to begin to prepare and shape students in readiness for these many opportunities, but also to support them in becoming well rounded and confident human beings. 

Across the Creative department within the three disciplines of Art, Music and Drama, students will have the opportunities to develop many skills, working with a wide range of materials, styles and techniques in Art, different instruments and musical styles in Music and various performance styles and technical areas in Drama. The curriculum at Foundation stage provides the building blocks for students who then choose to opt for our subjects at Examination stage. The Foundation schemes of work are purposely designed to provide the students with a wide variety of skills, techniques and experiences across the three disciplines. Our schemes of work are developed to ensure that all students are taken through step by step instructions to enable them to develop their own work and skills into successful and individual final pieces of work in Art, or compositions and opportunities for performance in Music and Drama. These performance and compositional skills are not only vital aspects of the Music and Drama curriculum, but also help to provide students with essential life skills and build self esteem.

Art

AO1: Develop ideas through investigations, demonstrating critical understanding of sources. 

AO2: Refine work by exploring ideas, selecting and experimenting with appropriate media, materials, techniques and processes. 

AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions as work progresses. 

AO4: Present a personal and meaningful response that realises intentions and demonstrates understanding of visual language.

Drama

AO1: Create and develop ideas to communicate meaning for theatrical performance. 

AO2: Apply theatrical skills to realise artistic intentions in live performance.  

AO3: Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of how drama and theatre is developed and performed. 

AO4: Analyse and evaluate their own work and the work of others.

Music

AO1 Perform with technical control, expression and interpretation. 

AO2 Compose and develop musical ideas with technical control and coherence. 

AO3 Demonstrate and apply musical knowledge.

AO4 Use appraising skills to make evaluative and critical judgements about music.

Throughout both our curriculum and extra-curricular opportunities we aim to provide students with a wide range of experiences to experience the wider world. 

• World Art project
• Identity Art project
• Pop Art project
• Theatre trips
• Ugly bucket theatre workshops
• African Drumming project
• The Blues project
• DOT Art competition

All Creative classrooms have a visualiser which our teachers use to model for our students, therefore scaffolding more challenging curriculum content so that it is accessible to all.

All topics lead to a final piece/performance but the lead up to the final outcome is well developed and broken down to smaller skills/steps. These skills and steps are then built on to enable all students to achieve and experience success in reaching that final outcome.  

In the Foundation Stage classes are mixed ability to ensure that all get to see what ‘excellence’ looks and sounds like. This also ensures that students adopt more of a growth mindset and focus on improvement as opposed to feeling labeled. 

Any written element of the courses studied at GCSE have plenty of support materials to help students scaffold their work, enabling them to make appropriate and relevant comments about their own work, the work of other artists and performers, or set pieces they have to study.