Art and Design at Key Stage 4
The curriculum for Key Stage 4 Art and Design is prescribed by whichever exam board a school is following. There are four main exam boards:
All these exam boards offer at least one Art and Design GCSE. If your audience is likely to be from local schools it is worth finding out what boards they use and get advice from art and design teachers at those schools about what would be most useful for them. The criteria of exam boards periodically changes.
All exam boards stress proficiency and understanding within different areas of Art and Design such as Fine Art (including drawing, printmaking, sculpture) and Photography (including studio photography, film, digital media).
It depends on the nature of your portrait collection and the syllabus of the exam board as to what learning programmes you could run for KS4. Below are relevant ideas:
- Observational drawing in the gallery and evaluation of portraits for work journals
- Workshops investigating the craft of particular medium, such as studio photography or screen-printing.
Ira Frederick Aldridge, (1807-1867), actor, after James Northcote, oil on canvas, c.1826. Private Collection; on loan to the National Portrait Gallery, London.
A good example: Portraits and Identity
Manchester Art Gallery runs a KS3 and 4 workshop that aims to discover the different techniques and media employed by the artist who explore portraits and identity within their work and to expand pupils vocabulary by describing artworks whilst considering interpretation through a critical studies approach of analysis.
Led by a museum educator, pupils discuss the use of portraits throughout different time periods. Within a practical workshops students complete contextual analysis of artworks and explore alternative drawing techniques and composition through the use of photography.