By Clare Boreham Kerr

In this Pedagogy in 250 Words, SEN specialist and Art and DT Lead Clare Boreham, at Benton Dene School, shares with us the importance of adapting art lessons to include learners with different specific educational needs and discusses how she does this. Clare breaks down her approach into three key points to ensure that you, as educators, feel enabled to navigate the varied landscape of teaching and learning in SEN and that your learners can experience art in a way that works for them.

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AccessArt is a UK Charity and we believe everyone has the right to be creative. AccessArt provides inspiration to help us all reach our creative potential.

What We Like About This Resource…

“I really like how this playful resource helps us to make a creative response inspired by a stimulus, ensuring that the stimulus is only an entry point into an outcome that will look totally different. Exploring the themes of colour, texture and composition through the lens of different artists also helps us see how we can interpret (and re-interpret) colours and materials in a meaningful way. Viewfinders and collage are also great tools for those who experience ‘fear of the white page’ and will allow learners to make conscious creative decisions as they go.” – Tobi, AccessArt

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Adapting AccessArt: Colour and Composition

Cut Paper Collage Still Life

Cooking with collage

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Making Physical or Digital Layered Portraits

Pathway: Exploring Identity

Quentin Blake’s Drawings as Inspiration: Exaggerating to communicate

Session Recording: Creating School Exhibitions & Displays

Finger Palette Portraits

elastic band sketchbook

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Other Resources by Joe Gamble

Adapting AccessArt: Colour and Composition

Thoughtful Mark making

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Redesigning food Packaging

What i ate in a day

Paint Your corner Shop

Creating Repeat Patterns

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Drawing Prompt Cards

Watercolour Washes Inspired by the Tapestries of Henry Moore

Paint Your corner Shop

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Manipulating Paper: Turning 2D into 3D

Making Prompt cards

playful making pathway

ASTRONAUT PAPER BODY CASTS

Turkish map fold

Adapting AccessArt: Playful Making Inspired by Nnena Kalu

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Roots to shoots

Prompt cards for making

coat-hanger shells

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Pathway: Making Birds

Flying Minpin Birds

Visual Arts Planning: Birds

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ten minutes, five times a week

the drawing journey

all drawing resources

What We Like About This Resource….

This project combines art and science in innovative and creative ways. It engages children with simple and more complex sewing skills, both hand and machine. The fact that a local artist collaborated on this project, bringing her own set of skills and experience is so valuable for any extended art project, and the children were able to connect with the sensitivity of the subject matter and to empathise with it’s message.

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Autumn Floor Textiles

Cloth, Paint, Print: Inspired by Natural Objects

Making Painted & Sewn Landscapes

which artists: merlin evans

What We Like About This Resource…

‘This resource really demonstrates how art can successfully bring awareness to important humanitarian issues, promote inclusivity and can give a platform to those who otherwise wouldn’t be heard. The links between text, photos and drawings are really strong and demonstrate the creative process used by Olivier from start to finish. I really like the inclusion of suggestions for students within the post, which encourage students to learn more about their community and to understand the experience of being displaced. This is turn will hopefully inspire the next generation to be part of an inclusive and empathetic society.‘ – Tobi, AccessArt

What We Like About This Resource…

“This activity highlights how visual communication can be used to convey emotion. When artwork is relatable in a human and emotive way it can be really powerful. Learning how to translate feeling into mark-making is a really important skill and can help children break down the essence of a range of their own emotions, and communicate it to others. Explore colour and a range of materials to enrich this experience.” – Tobi, AccessArt.

What We Like About This Resource

“I love this resource because I can picture the energy in the classroom whilst students enjoy the process of mark-making using their feet. Creating drawings with parts of the body other than hands can be really freeing; students will hopefully look at their drawings in a less critical way, with the emphasis of the activity being more about the process than the outcome. It might be a nice addition to use a viewfinder to zoom in on areas where the marks collide in interesting ways” – Tobi, AccessArt.

What We Like About This Resource

“This is a great activity to get students to think about drawing in a different way. Extending reach and accepting a lack of control can lead to really exciting and energised mark-making. It’s great to see that this resource has also been used in SEND settings, demonstrating its accessibility.” – Tobi, AccessArt.

What We Love About This Resource…

So often, we hear talk of the distinction between science and art, and no more so when teenagers proceed through their education and they are encouraged to choose one route or another. In reality, creative thinking helps scientific understanding and a scientific approach can inform and inspire art.

It’s so refreshing to read and see Merlin’s experience and understand how she works between these two areas – in her words “mixing subjects, and seeing how they work and intersect is where inventions take place!“

We also love the way her work embraces the felt world of being human, as well as the known world. We’re sure many young people will find Merlin’s work of interest and reassuring when they are pressured to choose “art or science“.

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Drawing as a Way of Understanding

Fay Penrose, Lecturer in Veterinary Biology at The Veterinary School at University of Liverpool, who shares her work in introducing drawing as a way of checking understanding of complex subjects. This methodology would be very transferable to a number of subject areas in schools.

Drawing as a Way of Understanding

Resource by Andrea Butler sharing her process of making drawings whilst walking. “I wanted to develop a way of drawing that captured my sensory and visual experiences as I moved through the landscape.”