By Tobi Meuwissen

In this resource pupils will play with shape, colour and collage to create artwork inspired by a healthy recipe.

The aim of this resource is to introduce pupils to an understanding of healthy eating through creativity, whilst learning skills such as cutting, composition and colour mixing. This session covers around 3 hours and can also be extended into printmaking.

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Creative practitioners, educators, teachers, parents, learners…

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Schools, Colleges, Arts Organisations: Single and Multi-Users

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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.

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Redesigning food Packaging

What i ate in a day

Paint Your corner Shop

Creating Repeat Patterns

A collection of sources and imagery to explore terms used in colour theory.

Please note that this page contains links to external websites and has videos from external websites embedded. At the time of creating, AccessArt checked all links to ensure content is appropriate for teachers to access. However external websites and videos are updated and that is beyond our control. 

Please let us know if you find a 404 link, or if you feel content is no longer appropriate. 

We strongly recommend as part of good teaching practice that teachers watch all videos and visit all websites before sharing with a class. On occasion there may be elements of a video you would prefer not to show to your class and it is the teacher’s responsibility to ensure content is appropriate. Many thanks. 

*If you are having issues viewing videos it may be due to your schools firewall or your cookie selection. Please check with your IT department.*

This resource is free to access and is not a part of AccessArt membership.

Colour Theory

Colour theory can be overwhelming to understand and teach. 

AccessArt would encourage an intuitive approach to teaching colour through resources such as Expressive Painting and Colour Mixing, however the information below will help you understand some of the terminology used in colour theory.

Primary Colours

Primary colours are any of a group of colours from which all other colours can be achieved by mixing. Red, yellow and blue can’t be recreated through colour mixing and act as the building blocks for all other colours.

Secondary Colours

Secondary colours are achieved when the primary colours are mixed together in equal parts. On the colour wheel, secondary colours are located between primary colours.

• Red and blue: Purple

• Red and yellow: Orange

• Yellow and Blue: Green

Tertiary Colours

Tertiary colours can be achieved by mixing primary and secondary colours. Blue-green, blue-violet, red-orange, red-violet, yellow-orange and yellow-green are colour combinations you can make from colour mixing. On a colour wheel, tertiary colours are between primary and secondary colours. – Adobe

Additional Terms Used When Talking About Colour:

Hue: Brightest and purest form of the colour on the colour wheel.

Saturation: The intensity and vibrance of a colour.

Value: How light or dark a colour is.

Shades: Achieved by adding black gradually to a colour.

Tint: Achieved by adding white gradually to a colour.

Tone: Achieved by adding grey gradually to a colour.

See Resources Exploring Colour Below…

Colour Mixing

Exciting Colour

Expressive Painting and Colour Mixing

A collection of evidence-based reports which help map the changes to the art education (and wider arts) landscape over the past few years, and a collection of articles to help share solutions to the issues raised.

If you would like us to add a link to a report or relevant article please email paula@accessart.org.uk.

Paula Briggs, CEO & Creative Director AccessArt, 2024.

Evidence

A Class Act

Social Mobility and the Creative Industries, Sutton Trust 2024

The State of The Arts

Campaign for the Arts and the University of Warwick, 2024

The Art Now Report

Commissioned by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Art, Craft and Design Education

The Arts in Schools: Foundations for the Future

Published by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and A New Direction

Urgent Reform needed in 11-16 Education

The Education for 11–16 Year Olds Committee, December 2023

Culture in Crisis: impacts of Covid-19 on the UK cultural sector

Culture in Crisis shares research findings from one of the world’s largest investigations into the impacts of Covid-19 on the cultural industries.

Solutions

Can Labour Show It Really Understands The Power Of The Arts To Transform Lives?

Why Would We Ignore What The Arts Can Do For Us?

The Current Education System: Too Much Beta, Not Enough Alpha

Rethinking the Space in Which We Learn

Taking Control of the narrative

Why We Need To Change The Narrative Around Art Education

Not Just Ideas: Action

Explore AccessArt’s vision and the impact it is having on art education.

AccessArt’s Pedagogical Approach

Over the past 25 years AccessArt has helped define a rigorous yet highly accessible approach to visual arts education.

Education: The Fundamentals

Produced by Nesta and the Education Policy Institute

Visual Arts Manifesto

24 Arts Organisations share a vision

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Manipulating Forms in Landscape Painting

Layered Colour Gestural Drawing

Cut Paper Collage Still Life

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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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Screenprinting in the classrom

SCREENPRINTING USING OVERLAID PATTERN

exciting colour

Creating Repeat Patterns With Rachel Parker

What We Like About This Resource…

“I really like how Yu-Ching’s process combines hand-drawing and painting, before moving across to digital. Combining those processes ensures that the illustrations retain a very warm, tactile look to them, but the digital element refines the imagery. We really like what Yu-Ching says about the benefits of silent books being universally understood and feel that the benefits and challenges of not using words means that the imagery has to be really clear, which encourages lots of exciting creative problem-solving.” – Tobi, AccessArt

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Creating a Storyboard and dummy book

Drawable: the 3 Panel Challenge

Drawable: My Tiger Sketchbook

Illustrating The Jabberwocky

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Visual Arts Planning Collections: Cardboard and paper

Making a Sculptural Modroc Mask

Making a Mask from Sticks and Tissue Paper

See This Resource Used in Schools…

On Monday 1st July 2024 we celebrated AccessArt’s 25th birthday by hosting the first ever AccessArt Draw-Along!

The AccessArt team led a number of drawing exercises, and Rowan Briggs Smith was our live drawing demonstrator.

Thousands of participants watched the live event on their whiteboards or devices following along in classrooms, halls, community spaces or homes. You can find images of drawings from the session on this Padlet.

Register Your Interest in the Next Draw-Along

Wherever you are, whoever you are, you are invited to our next Draw-Along event (date to be confirmed) to draw alongside us in a participatory event!

Keep an eye on the CPD Zoom Events page to get updates on when the next Draw-Along will be.

The event will be open and free of charge to AccessArt members only.

Please Remember:

• The exercises are suitable for everyone – ages 5 through to adult

• By showing the event on a whiteboard you can have as large a participatory audience as you like. You only need to book one place per device used to share from.

• You must not charge participants for the event.

• The event is free of charge but only open to AccessArt members. The Zoom webinar link will be behind the AccessArt membership wall – so please make sure you are a member of AccessArt and can login! 

• These events will NOT be recorded.

AccessArt has joined forces with the National Education Union and a coalition of organisations in the arts and education sectors to spotlight the eroding of the arts across the curriculum.

The Arts Apocalypse statement offers policy solutions that the signatories believe would help save the arts from catastrophe.

We urge politicians of all parties to consider the statement, take notice of the critical situation and commit to implementing the solutions offered.

Please download the full statement and share

Arts Apocalypse: Time For Change in a Failing System

The crisis in our schools is deep, multi-faceted and worsening. The current state of arts education is one of the clearest signs of what has gone wrong with our whole system.

A commitment to arts education is essential to arrest the decline and to build an education system fit for the 21st century.

We call on politicians of all parties to recognise and respond to the problems on the scale that is necessary. We encourage educators and the wider arts community to push for radical change in their schools and communities.

The arts are essential to human fulfilment; they are meaning-making activities which have a personal, social and economic value. But in education, what is recognised in principle is often denied in practice. In an underfunded system, we have seen arts education decimated as school leaders are forced to make impossible decisions on an ever-dwindling budget and a damaging focus on a narrow curriculum.

In primary schools, the demands of testing all too often push arts education into a corner of the curriculum. Primary teachers report that they do not feel enabled to be successful arts educators. Initial Teacher Training fails to prepare teachers to deliver arts subjects with confidence. Opportunities for professional development are rare.

In secondary schools, the move towards ever greater accountability rooted in the promotion of the EBacc system has a similar effect: students are actively discouraged from pursuing Arts-based routes. Subjects, like English, which the government sees as important have been stripped of their creative content. Assessment in other arts subjects is overloaded with written tasks. Increasingly, the government steers schools to deliver a prescriptive, often centrally planned curriculum, focused on examinations, in which Arts are sidelined. The impact on behaviour, mental health, school engagement and attendance has been catastrophic.

We demand systemic change

Learning to be a teacher of art or music – indeed of any subject – should mean learning about the skills and knowledge associated with that specialism. Reshaped by government, teacher education has come to mean something else – a training in generic skills, a lowering of quality.

The numbers are plunging. As a generation of students who have been through the declining system reach adulthood, recruitment of specialist teachers in the Arts subjects has fallen to dangerous levels. This negative spiral threatens the very existence of quality Arts education in schools. Where good practice does exist, it is in spite of the system, not because of it.

The consequences of not changing course are bleak. We have a system that does not help students reach their potential, that neglects their cultural experiences at home and in the community, that adds to problems of poor mental health, behaviour and attendance.

The relegation of the Arts subjects to third class citizens in our education system threatens the future of the creative industries in this country, but it also hinders our ability to nurture children to fully develop their talents and interests. It obstructs their access to the Arts, rights which are protected in Article 29 and 31 of the UN Convention on the Human Rights of the Child.

We believe that the benefits of a rounded, broad curriculum with an equal focus on the Arts can bring huge societal, economic, and personal mental health benefits to future generations. We demand systemic change.

We want politicians to pledge the following:

• A significant increase in education spending, with specific funding for Arts education.

• To increase the supply of teachers in the Arts, where ITT recruitment falls well short of targets.

• To conduct a full review of curriculum and assessment from EYFS to Post-16 with the stated aim of broadening and improving Arts education. Practices such as Progress 8, EBacc and SATs that work to sideline Arts education should be ended.

• To no longer use damaging low value language and ‘Mickey Mouse’ rhetoric to describe arts subjects.

• To rebuild Arts education organisations which support schools.

• To give education and arts trade unions, subject associations, arts educators, arts organisations a seat at the table when the curriculum is reviewed.

The Arts Apocalypse statement is supported by the following organisations:

National Education Union, AccessArt, WGGB – The Writers’ Union, Centre for Literacy in Primary Education, Black Lives in Music, Equity, Musicians’ Union, One Dance UK, Susan M Coles -Arts Creativity Educational Consultant, Artist, UK Literacy Association, Music for Youth, National Drama, London Drama and National Society for Education in Art & Design.

At AccessArt, we are keen to share our insight, experience and vision as to how we might rethink the value and purpose of art education in particular, and education in general. 

With a new Labour government and a Curriculum Review promised, we are at a pivotal moment in the UK.

The following articles have been curated to help share our thoughts and start a conversation. Please get in touch if you would like to discuss further, share your ideas, or lend your support. 

Arts Education In Crisis: We Have The Evidence – Now We Need The Solution

Evidence and Solutions

A collection of current reports into the state of the arts / education, and solutions.

Can Labour Show It Really Understands The Power Of The Arts To Transform Lives?

What can art do for us, and why we shouldn’t ignore it…

Read why we need to see that Labour understands the true value of the arts to individuals and to society.

Taking Control of the narrative

“I realised through conversations with school leavers that they could no longer use words like intuition, entitlement, dreaming, invention, play. These words are unfamiliar to them, and they no longer resonate. These words, and therefore the ways of being they describe, are not available to them right now.”

Read why we need to change the narrative and speak with more courage about the purpose of education…

The Current Education System: Too Much Beta, Not Enough Alpha

Is our current education system helping to break, not build?

Can awareness of brainstates help us move forward to a more balanced curriculum?

Why AccessArt Can’t support oak national academy

“Like many educational publishers, we were concerned at the time about both the nature and quality of the resources created, the ethics of the creation of a curriculum by government, and also the potential impact of a so called “free” curriculum on commercial and charitable educational suppliers…”

Read why we think Oak is a flawed idea…

Not just ideas: Action Too

“One cold, rainy morning in January 1999, I received a phone call from the then DfES. The woman started the call with the words: “What is the best news someone could call you with on such a rainy January day?””

Explore and understand all that AccessArt has achieved and the impact we are making

Please Get In Touch

During 2022 and 2023 AccessArt attended consultations organised by Oak National Academy to explore the potential for relaunching Oak after its initial creation during the pandemic. Like many educational publishers, we were concerned at the time about both the nature and quality of the resources created, the ethics of the creation of a curriculum by government, and also the potential impact of a so called “free” curriculum on commercial and charitable educational suppliers.

First, a little history about AccessArt. We are 25 years old this year, and we are proud to say that for the last few years we have become a self-supporting arts organisation, requiring no funding from outside sources. We are in this fortunate position because our (many thousands of) members pay a small subscription fee to access all our resources. In turn, this allows us to create new resources for our community, and most importantly, remain true to our vision and integrity. The insight, intelligence and pragmatic nature of our offering to schools means that we are privileged to help thousands of teachers inspire hundreds of thousands of pupils. This is no more in evidence than in the creation of the AccessArt Primary Art Curriculum. When we planned and created our curriculum, we were brave, followed our instinct and experience, and made certain that alongside the curriculum ethos and resources we created a support system and network to enable teachers to become enthusiastic, knowledgeable and confident art facilitators. The success of the curriculum has been recognised, with schools and Trusts recommending the flexible and empowering scheme to their colleagues. Our real pride though, is that artists, designers and craftspeople recognise the curriculum as being robust, exciting and rich – exactly the kind of experience they appreciate and value as artists.

So you can image we are justifiably proud of our achievement. We are now busy at work on our Key Stage 3 pathways, and beyond into adult and community education. Our vision is true, our team and trustees incredible, and our business model as a membership charity is strong.

In 2023 AccessArt was approached by Oak National Academy to explore partnership working in the creation of new curriculum resources, and later the same year I was approached to join the Expert Group. We turned both opportunities down. Here’s why.

There is currently a Judicial Review brought about by three claimants: The British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA), the Publishers Association, and the Society of Authors. This is also supported by the National Education Union who are participating as an “interested party”.

“The government’s plans for Oak will be an unprecedented and unevidenced intervention that will cause irreparable damage to the education sector as we know it. The government is in effect creating a one-size-fits-all state publisher that promotes a single curriculum, controlled by the Education Secretary of the day. This will undo years of work by publishers who have invested expertise over many decades in creating a rich range of world-leading resources for school children across the country.

“There is simply too much at stake to let these plans proceed unopposed. The potential impact on teacher autonomy, learner outcomes, and curriculum diversity and quality is too significant. That is why authors, publishers, educational suppliers, school groups, teachers’ unions, and others have all voiced strong concern over these plans.” Dan Conway, CEO of the Publishers Association

“If we don’t act now, educators will be left with one set of state approved online resources which will threaten diversity and choice, remove financial incentives, and damage the healthy competition which is at the heart of educational publishing. The result will likely be a weaker overall pool of resources, greater challenges for teachers, and a negative impact on students’ learning.” Nicola Solomon, Chief Executive of the Society of Authors

“Converting Oak from an emergency response to Covid to a permanent part of government is a decision with ominous implications. Without consultation or parliamentary debate, the government has taken a long stride towards directing the detail of teachers’ work. Unless its actions are challenged, what is now presented as an optional resource will soon become the norm in schools. The government should recognise its limits: it does not have the capacity, the imagination and the understanding to intervene in this way.” Kevin Courtney, Joint Gen Sec, NEU.

The concerns echoed by the case brought to Judicial review, are echoed by the National Education Union. Key NEU concerns:

Claims that OAK is “by and for teachers” and “operationally independent” of Government misrepresent its true nature: OAK is under the ultimate control of ministers. Its resources are produced by a range of organisations by way of a commercial tendering process.

The Government’s business case for Oak is clear that it will be “continuously strategically aligned with Government policy as it develops over time”.

OAK’s status means there is a risk its materials will be seen as Government approved and “safe”.
This will increase pressure for schools to use their products, particularly given the pressures that Ofsted exerts, and its current focus on curriculum

Examples of how OAK is aligned with Ofsted include:

Each of the “Subject Expert Panels” set up to advise on the production of Oak materials includes an Ofsted Inspector

The Government’s business case for the OAK ALB acknowledged that Ofsted’s overall emphasis, since 2019, on the curriculum within school inspections “may…be influential in shaping and accelerating the uptake of [Oak’s] service.”

Read the Full NEU Statement here.

We believe Oak is a flawed and dangerous idea, and we are not alone. We believe that whilst Oak attempts to involve experts in its creation, the mechanisms and ethos behind creation of resources will ultimately restrict and control. And let’s remember that whilst Oak touts itself as being “free”, it does in fact cost money which the government could choose to spend in wiser ways to value teachers, build knowledge and seek real vision. Those original consultations we attended? We see no evidence of listening to what we heard during those sessions, and in many other education roundtables, as a no thank you to Oak National Academy.

As a Subject Association and charitable organisation which has worked long and hard to develop expertise which develops and enables our community of users to feel supported, inspired and empowered, AccessArt will continue to work independently through our principles and practice to support our members. We thank you for your continued support and understanding about what’s really important in art education.

Paula Briggs, CEO & Creative Director AccessArt, April 2024

Explore…

Taking Control of the narrative

“I realised through conversations with school leavers that they could no longer use words like intuition, entitlement, dreaming, invention, play. These words are unfamiliar to them, and they no longer resonate. These words, and therefore the ways of being they describe, are not available to them right now.”

Read why we need to change the narrative and speak with more courage about the purpose of education…

Not just ideas: Action Too

“One cold, rainy morning in January 1999, I received a phone call from the then DfES. The woman started the call with the words: “What is the best news someone could call you with on such a rainy January day?””

Explore and understand all that AccessArt has achieved and the impact we are making