Extra Curricular Art plays an important and significant role in the Art and Design department and in school life as whole. The department adopts an ‘open-house policy’ throughout the week, which allows girls of all year groups to come to the department and make full use of the facilities, equipment and materials, at lunchtime, and after school.
After school a full and broad range of extra-curricular activities take place. Most of the activities are geared towards providing support to GCSE and Sixth Form artists; enabling girls who prefer to complete their homework at school, access equipment and materials, and have staff on hand to ask for advice as and when required. Also, at these levels of study, after school sessions provide a greater length of time for pupils to create than in lessons; in particular the sustained level of study required on a larger scale works do require a greater length of sustained periods of concentrated time.
Each term, a series of specialist workshops are organised by the Head of Art and Design for sixth form artists. These sessions enable pupils to extend their core skills and knowledge of specialist media using more expressive and risk taking approaches to creating that are not always possible in lessons.
Life-drawing also plays an integral part in both the GCE and IB Arts courses. These sessions normally take place after school and provide a unique opportunity for pupils to work from a nude. In these sessions girls acquire essential drawing and measuring skills which enable them to produce a much higher technical standard of Art in their coursework and examination studies.
The work that girls produce in these workshops and life-drawing sessions makes an incredibly valuable contribute towards the A Level and IB course, and especially if a pupil is building a portfolio for submission to Art School.
Sixth form Art Scholars, in conjunction with the Head of Artand Design, are encouraged to organise and run Extra Curricular workshops for sixth form artists and/or Lower school pupils. A series of Art Club activities for Lower School pupils is currently set-up by members of the Art Department in conjunction with the Art Scholars.
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