Our reputation for excellence is founded not just on our students’ excellent academic results, but on our sense of community, our incredible extra-curricular offer and our focus on all aspects of students’ development. The Art department is a very lively area of the Thomas Hardye school. We have large numbers of students who go onto creative courses after their time with us. We have four large classrooms, a specialist printmaking room and a small sixth form art room. Currently we are in the process of converting a classroom into a small exhibition room. We teach students from Yr9 to Yr13. In Yr9 we teach sixteen classes of thirty students. At GCSE we have 160 students taking Art, for A Level Art we teach 60 students and 30 students for A Level photography. The Arts Society Dorset County have been working with our Art department now for many years and we have established a close link to support our students. The Society has helped us in many ways over the years; they have paid for a yearly professional lecture for our 6th form, this has really helped our A Level students with their critical and contextual knowledge, we have enjoyed engaging talks from Tate gallery lecturers. The Society has also paid for several Yr8 workshops where talented students from the Middle schools have visited Hardye’s to spend the day either working alongside an artist or one of our art team. The society has also financially supported a number of art students on low income with a bursary when they started at a University or College on an Art course. The society was very helpful during the pandemic, they gave us financial support towards art kits that could go home to students working in lockdown and also funded specialist art equipment kits when students had to work in bubbles in non-art rooms. Also during the pandemic, the Society arranged for ex Hardye’s student Marina Renee Cemmick, now a professional artist, to talk about her creative journey to our students, their families and the Society members online, this was immensely inspiring. The society has also supported us by meeting and talking with us about the needs of our students and having an active interest in what we do. They have attended our annual Yr13 exhibition and talked to our students about their work and aspirations as well as attending all of the workshops they have financially supported. We are immensely grateful.