Yarra Hills Secondary College facilitates students to create visual artworks that communicate, challenge and express their own and others’ ideas. Our school offers all students Art and Visual Communication Design disciplines as core subjects within the Arts key learning area.
Imagination and creativity are essential to our wellbeing and are pivotal experiences for our students in the Arts at Yarra Hills Secondary College. In their first years of secondary school, students study Art and Visual Communication Design as semester length subjects. These visual arts subjects engage students in a journey of discovery, experimentation and problem solving. Students are introduced to using a range of visual techniques, technologies, practices and processes to transform their ideas in to finished art works.
In broad terms, learning in the Visual Arts involves creating and exploring artworks and visual communications. Students learn to develop an individual and personalised use of the design process to explore, express and present their design ideas as artists and designers. Additionally, they also reflect on their own art making, and also respond to work of artists and designers from a range of cultures. Through our curriculum, Yarra Hills students develop an understanding of how artists and designers contribute to our everyday lives, and a creative society.
Students in Year 7 and 8 will discover the “building blocks” of Art and Visual Communication Design and use these to help make their own artworks and visual communications. This provides a sound basis to build on the broad elective program, that follows in Year 9 & 10. It is here our students have a breadth of choice in visual arts, and are able to elect subjects such as Ceramics, Creative Drawing & Painting, Media, Digital Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture, Sustainable Art and Visual Communication Design. These Year 9 & 10 subjects fully prepare our students for the VCE visual arts subjects of Media, Studio Arts and Visual Communication Design.
Regular displays of student artwork in the school community classrooms, corridors and school foyers showcase student talent and helps to communicate their ideas and build on their sense of achievement. Additionally, an annual whole of school exhibition, in conjunction with community school groups, helps facilitate links with Primary Schools, local businesses and the wider community. This exhibition also displays work from the Art Extension program that Yarra Hills SC implements in local primary schools. Yarra Hills Secondary College is very proud to facilitate the annual Yarra Hills Community Art Show, which showcases the talent of our emerging student artists and designers in the Yarra Ranges community.