Department of Art and Design

The art suite is open-plan and offers two general purpose teaching rooms, a ceramics area and photographic dark room and a 6 th form room.

Throughout their art education students are encouraged to apply the visual language of art, i.e. Line, Tone, Shape, Colour, Pattern, Texture, with increasing competence.

At Key Stage 3 students learn about the importance of ‘line’ in Year 7; the application of ‘tone’ and ‘colour’ in Year 8 and work in a range of 2D/3D media during Year 9.

At Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5 students develop more personal ideas of enquiry in response to ‘themes’ set by staff in the department.

Two full-time art teachers, Mr A Warburton and Mr K Davies, both practising artists, deliver the curriculum at Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5.

The Head of Department, Mr A Warburton is an experienced moderator at GCSE. He has won ” The Prince of Wales” Awards for pioneering mural work in the community, received a six month Travelling Scholarship to the USA and organised numerous visits to galleries and other places of interest in Cardiff, Oxford and London.

Teams of inspectors from ESTYN and ESIS have selected art work from the department as examples of good practice for display and INSET purposes. Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of the Tate Gallery, described work by the department as “innovative”.

Students are successful in entering and winning prizes in art competitions at local, national and international level.

Good links with the Centre of Art and Design in Pontypridd are well established.