The Creative Arts curriculum encompasses Art, Music and Performing Arts, which are offered throughout the different key stages and some of which are optional through lunchtime clubs. We also celebrate the Arts through special days when we focus on specific aspects of this subject.

At Purple Oaks Academy, the Art and Music curriculum gives students the opportunity to develop creativity, communication, confidence, and leadership skills. The arts encourage individual expression and help children and young people to define their creative futures. Our curriculum increases young people’s experiences and understanding of artists, musicians, practitioners, and cultural organisations, embracing new forms, technologies, and traditions. This helps to spark and unlock innate creativity across the curriculum and supports students in becoming well-rounded individuals.

Art and Music encourage discipline, inquisitiveness, and determination, whilst also broadening horizons and raising aspirations. We aim to create motivating and rewarding lessons where students can engage, explore, and inspire their imagination. Learners are supported to develop practical skills and proficiency while also reflecting on the wider role of the arts in society – whether to entertain, inspire, provoke debate, or challenge views and perceptions.

Our approach is fully inclusive: we minimise barriers so that all pupils can participate, learn, and achieve. For students with profound and multiple learning difficulties, Art and Music focus on sensory exploration, ensuring that every learner can experience creativity in a meaningful way.

The Art and Music curriculum is underpinned by the National Curriculum, adapted through the Cornerstones curriculum and Charanga Music, to meet the needs of our learners across informal, semi-formal, and formal pathways. In Art, projects are carefully sequenced to build knowledge of visual elements, artists, art forms and movements, and are enriched by theatre, gallery, and museum visits. In Music, students explore how music is created and communicated through pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure, and notation, while performing, listening to, and evaluating music across a wide range of genres, styles, and traditions.

As pupils progress through the academy, their growing knowledge of art and music helps them to make meaningful connections across subjects, understand their place in local, national, and global communities, and deepen their appreciation of the interaction between creativity, culture, and society. Ultimately, the Art and Music curriculum at Purple Oaks Academy aims to foster joy in learning, unlock imagination, and empower every student to succeed.

For the Music syllabus we follow the Charanga music education online platform.