Priory School and the creation of the DSH Logo

This is a description of the work of the Art & Design Department, Priory School, Shrewsbury both generally and also in relation to the DSH logo competition.

The work of the Art & Design Department

The Priory School Art Department teaches students ranging from years 7 to 11. The students learn various art and design skills which relate to the world of work wherever possible. As we are a Business and Enterprise College the curriculum for Art allows our students to benefit from various enterprising activities that have been introduced over the past few years. These include, visiting speakers, primary school workshops, various visits to businesses and competitions such as our annual Christmas Card Competition in year 7. Students are given a brief and have to design a Christmas card, the winning design is then used as the official Priory School Christmas card. Livesey Ltd, the company that produce the card, provides the winner and 2 runners up with a tour of the company.

In Year 9 students have the opportunity to opt for the Applied Art GCSE (Double Award) as well as the Art GCSE. The Applied option is geared towards keen artists, as the vocational element of the course prepares them for a career in Art and Design.

The DSH logo competition

The students at the Priory are extremely skilled and talented as demonstrated in high GCSE pass rates. It is students like these who took part in the "Discovering Shropshire's History" Logo competition. 34 Students began this project back in February 2006. By analysing other logos and researching Shropshire, they came up with various designs to develop and take forward. The logos were then finalised using hand-rendered and computer generated techniques and were finally submitted at the end of April.

The winning design

The five students who were short listed had their work exhibited in Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery for two weeks during May. The public were able to vote for their favourite design. The short list included:

Alex Pinches - Winner
Kurt Tanner - Second
Kirsty Mapp - Third
Sophie Nolan - Runner up
Lucy Balcombe - Runner up

Designing this logo was a fantastic opportunity that really enhanced the students Applied Art experience as they benefited from following a real brief with real deadlines.

To see more work from the Art Department and to find out more about The Priory School visit http://www.priory.shropshire.sch.uk