The Arts in Schools - Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

The natural pleasure and versatility which children have inlearning, at this stage, give teachers the opportunity and, wethink, the responsibility both to produce work of a highstandard throughout the primary school and to give a firmfoundation of attitudes, skills and understanding for allsubsequent work in the arts. What this involves will varybetween the arts. We can take as two examples, the visualarts in general, and music.69 Visual In the visual arts, the curriculum from 5—11 should enablearts children to:a experiment with different media — watercolour, crayon,paper, cloth, clay etcb explore different techniques, tools and modes of manipulationin each — modelling, brush-work etce understand the basic ideas of, for example, tone, colour,texture and contrast, and, eventually, of more complicatedideas of, for example, balance, focus and proportiond begin to respond to a variety of styles and forms ofvisual art, including differences between cultural forms(eg Western, Oriental, African) and between historicalperiods (eg primitive, ancient, mediaeval, modern)e develop an awareness of the use of visual symbols toconvey ideas and feelingsf develop an awareness of design — the relationshipsbetween materials, forms and functions of objectsand constructionsg develop powers of observation and description 670 Music An overall aim of music in the curriculum from 5—11 is toenable children to use and to understand sound as a mediumof expression and communication. This will include enablingthem to:a experiment with, and develop skills in, producingsounds with:— the voice— a variety of musical instruments— other means of sound productionb work in a variety of groupings, large and small, using allof thesee discriminate and use timbre, pitch, intensity, rhythmand duration, with increasing accuracyd use conventional and accepted musical forms andstyles as well as experimenting with otherse begin to respond to a variety of styles and forms of51