Textiles

Subject Intent

 
The Textiles Department seeks to develop students’ visual language and hone the skills needed to make them confident and knowledgeable practitioners. Students will understand the creative process and develop the skills and knowledge needed to produce textiles pieces. They will have experience of working in a range of media and using a range of techniques. Students will understand how to describe and analyse the work of different artists and designers and also understand how this work impacts on their own. Students will gain an understanding of textiles methods from a range of cultures.

Subject Implementation

When students study Textile Design at GCSE or in the Sixth Form, their work will be more personal than it was during their Art classes at KS3. Students will develop their independence over the course and guide the direction of their portfolios.
Initially students will gather visual information using a range of techniques and materials that they started to explore during KS3, using the formal elements to make primary observations. Through this process students will hone their existing skills and learn new ones. They will be taught the importance and relevance of working from primary source materials and they will learn how observational studies form the basis of more complex projects. GCSE will be given a theme to work around whereas 6th form will all start with a similar piece of observational work but then quickly take their work in a more personal direction. Students will develop and stylise their work whilst exploring Textiles methods and mediums.
Students will be encouraged to be ambitious and sophisticated in the way that they develop their ideas. Students will be taught how to use a sketchbook as a working document and understand its significance in the process of creating Textiles. As students’ understanding of different practices grows, the work that they undertake will become more complex and sophisticated. Students will be taught how to use technical and specialist language when writing about their work and the work of different artists/designers and they use the work of others to inform their own work.

Subject Impact

We aim for our students to be confident practitioners who produce work that displays a sound grasp of key areas in Textile Design. Students should be able to understand the creative process and how it impacts on their life, on other people’s lives and how it transforms the world around them. Their work should show a greater level of sophistication and expertise when using a range of techniques and media. They should be able to critically analyse the work of different artists and designers and make comparisons between these and their own work. Students should be creative, inquisitive, imaginative, patient, focused, diligent, ambitious, tenacious and take risks.