Art of the matter

Bromley High School Early Years shortlisted for The National Gallery programme, Take One Picture

Bromley High Early Years has been shortlisted in The National Gallery’s national programme for primary schools, Take One Picture.  The programme celebrates children’s creativity and aims to inspire a lifelong love of art and learning. Winners of the competition will have their artwork exhibited in the gallery in the summer.

Every year, the gallery chooses one picture from their collection to inspire cross-curricular work in primary classrooms.  This year, the picture chosen was The Battle of San Romano by Paolo Uccello.

Winners of the competition will have their work exhibited in the gallery this summer

Over four months, Reception pupils at Bromley High examined the picture in depth with their class teacher, Miss Sarah-Louise Dunford, the school’s Art Coordinator who has studied a Masters in Integrative Arts Psychotherapy.

Bromley parents also took part on a virtual session in which they explored the picture and discussed their own ideas, thoughts and considerations.

Each week, the pupils focused on looking closely at the picture, taking each detail such as the clothing, battle, fruits, animals, foreground and background and closely analysis each piece. The girls enjoyed taking part in the discussion and used it as a basis to complete other tasks, such as building a tower for Pablo to live in or painting the horse in battle.

Miss Dunford said: “I was delighted to see the responses of our Reception pupils to the picture. One of the joys of working in Early Years is constantly enabling children to take ownership of their learning, seek child- initiated play and provide high-quality observations to ensure progress is reached.”

If successful in the second round, the Reception pupils will have the exciting opportunity to see their artwork exhibited at The National Gallery this summer.  Congratulations to the pupils and to Miss Dunford for their successful submission to the programme.