The Art department organises a range of trips, talks and workshops each year which aim to give students a varied and rich Art experience.

These range from visits to the major galleries and museums in London such as the Tate Modern, Saatchi and Victoria and Albert Museum. To more local museums such as the Pitt Rivers in Oxford and the Museum of East Asian Art in Bath. We also aim to take the practice of Art out of the classroom with Sculpture Trails at the Forest of Dean and workshops and talks with local artists in their studio's. The department also encourages trips and workshops with the Prep School and these have included visits to The Black Swan in Frome and The Big Draw.

On Thursday 25^th June year 7 and selected year 10 pupils took part in an art day. During the day we participated in a range of workshops including wire sculpting, mosaic and painting. The day was themed with lizards and birds.

At the beginning of the day we all came in wearing mufti, split into three groups and then went to our different workshops.

During the mosaic workshop a professional mosaic artist showed us how to do mosaics. Each group then put together a bird mosaic. The three mosaics consisted of a bird in front of the sun at sun rise, at midday and at sun set. Look out for them around the school site.

Next was the mural workshop where we painted a design by Charlotte Jeffery on to three big canvases. When we put it all together and stood it up it looked great! The design was of harvest, and of grape vines in a field. After this we created our own lizard and bird designs using oil pastels. You may have seen them outside the sports offices on the day!

Last of all we had the wire sculpting workshop where a professional wire sculptor showed us how to bend the wire to get the shape we wanted. It looked simple but when we had a go we found that it was very fiddly! Also we wrapped wire around the base of a lizard which was around 1m long!

All in all it was a great day and, thanks to all the art teachers and the professionals, it ran very smoothly and it was great fun!

By Natalie , Lizzie and Sophie – Year 7

Year 12 AS and IB Art students take part in a two day Raku workshop with local ceramic artists Rob and Vicky Whelpton at the Ginger Piggery in Boyton.