By Mrs Inkson (Head of Year 6)

Year 6 has started the IB PYP year with the theme of How We Express Ourselves. Our Central Idea is that people use different forms of expression to convey societal issues and personal values through street art. The girls first task was to unpack the Central Idea to understand what it actually means. The year group had some interesting discussions in their class and many questions arose, including 'What is street art?' 'What do 'societal issues' mean?' 'Is this like graffiti?' 'Do you need permission to create street art?' and 'Is street art the same as traditional art?'

Once they had clarified what the Central Idea was all about, we, as a class, decided that we needed to first define what art actually is. This led to some heated debates because there were conflicting views on what qualifies as art. Some of the girls believed that art had to take the form of a traditional 'painting,' while others were more open-minded and spent quite some time trying to convince the rest of the class why something as simple as a fork could be considered art.

The girls then moved on to examining examples of street art from around the world. They discovered many similarities between street art pieces and one common thread was that many of these artworks reflect how the artists feel about specific societal issues. It's not just Banksy who creates work to initiate discussions on contemporary issues – they found examples of other street artists, both internationally famous ones and local, unknown talents. The topics portrayed in these artworks are diverse, ranging from environmental concerns and conflicts to the cost of living, global healthcare, diversity and inclusion, and the impact of COVID.

In their art lessons, they also had the opportunity to design and create our own graffiti 'tags' using oil pastels.