MAT Spotlight: DSAT week 3

In the words of Vineet Raj Kapoor, Dean at School of Art and Design, Chitkara University, ‘our feelings, expression, creativity, spirit, enthusiasm and care can never be locked.’

These words were taken quite literally when, during Lockdown 1, a group of art and music leaders at some of DSAT schools formed two groups to produce bespoke curriculum and progression documents for use within DSAT schools. The fruits of our collaboration are now being utilised across DSAT, allowing a clear progression in skills and knowledge to flow in the curriculum areas of art and music. The collaboration has also resulted in an online CPL and an ‘Art Lockdown 3 Gallery’ where we share pieces of artwork from our schools that have been sent by children and their parents.

But the Lockdown collaboration was so much more than a finished document.

During the process, teachers who had never worked together before due to geographical location, from Royal Wootton Bassett to Weymouth, talked about how they were feeling during those first hesitant weeks of National Lockdown. A sense of community spirit developed and we grew to look forward to our twice weekly Teams meetings where we discussed approaches to composition and improvisation, even devising a risk assessment for a filled glass bottle scale and the challenges of 3D Sculpture as well as  ensuring creative ways of capturing art through sketch books so children could review and revisit their ideas. The enthusiasm of the group was palpable, and we nurtured each other, as people, as teachers and as artists and musicians.

Below, you can see some examples of artwork: