All students from Year 1 to 6 attend Visual Arts, Drama and Design classes for 120 minutes each week. The Arts provides a safe environment for personal expression and creative risk.
Students are exposed to:
- Visual Arts Practices (drawing, painting, sculpture, textiles, design and printmaking experiences).
- Design Practices (planning, creating, making, testing, reviewing, modifying and evaluating)
- Drama Practices (exploring, developing, creating, rehearsing and presenting)
These are scaffolded lessons throughout the years to build on previous skills learnt in class. Students engage with topics from across the curriculum, such as the environment, Indigenous Australia and Local History.
Through the Arts, students may participate in local community activities such the Governor Stirling Senior High School Interschool Speech and Drama Festival.
2023 The Bilya Project
Bassendean Primary School has embarked on an arts journey in 2023 that looks deeply into stories within the school and local community about how we live, work, and play on and beside the Swan River.
Working alongside established and emerging West Australian artists from many fields of expertise, such as puppetry, animation, film, photography, song writing and storytelling students will be able to display the many stories gathered into a visual collage for the community in a promenade event that young and old can move into, through and around in situ of found spaces.
Furthermore, collaborations with Governor Stirling Senior High School Arts Media students and Woodbridge Primary School Choir enhanced story creation from our wider community and fostered relationships we have built.
A creative multi-sensory interactive art installation that looks at how we work, live and play on and beside the Swan River. Students have re-imagined stories collected from the past and present and invited the school community to take a journey through light, sound and imagery throughout the school grounds. The art installation transformed Bassendean Primary School at twilight, to further tell stories about the river.
2021 Marri Tree Project
Our Art Specialist Teacher successfully applied for a $30 000 Creative Communities COVID-19 Recovery Program Grant from the DLGSC and Lotterywest that provided funding for a year-long artist-in-residence project in 2021. This project engaged in highly skilled art practitioners and facilitators Karen Hethey, Peter and Miranda Farmer, Kobi Morrison, Janine Oxenham, Derek Nannup, Gina Williams and Guy Ghouse. Other local artists Kirsty Grieve and Steve Berrick also contributed their skills and expertise to the project.
The year-long program culminated in an End of Year Concert and Art Exhibition showcasing the works and talents of our students.
Kaarak and Marri developed creative opportunities and connection with two totems the school was gifted in 2017 by the Perth Festival organisers as part of our contribution to the Boorna Yaangkiny: Trees are Speaking Festival (2014-2019). The totems were the Red-Tailed Black Cockatoo (Kaarak) and the Marri Tree. These were significant, as we have a pair of Kaaraks visit out school on a daily basis to eat seeds from the Marri Tree on the school grounds.
The project facilitated an in depth understanding of the relationship between the Kaarak and Marri Tree within the context of the Noongar Six Seasons for students and the parent community. Through the project we have been able to make lasting connections to local initiatives including Trillion Trees and the Kaarakin Rehabilitation Centre.
