IB Visual Art

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this course, however it is highly recommended that students have undertaken one or more Year 10 Art and Design study.

Course Description and Aims

Visual arts are an integral part of our daily lives. They have social, political, ritual, spiritual, decorative and functional values. The IB Visual Arts course encourages students to make sense of the world, to explore our place within it, and to transform our individual and collective ways of being in and with the world.  

In this visual arts course students learn to create, communicate and connect as artists.

Students engage in creative practices and processes working with a variety of art-making forms and creative strategies, and learn art-making as inquiry. The course curriculum is adapted to the unique contexts, interests and passions of the student. The classroom is a collaborative, inclusive, creative and conceptually rich space where students develop their art through personal lines of inquiry guided by artistic intentions.

The course encourages students to engage with the world through individual and shared experiences, imagination and action, and it fosters creativity, communication, critical thinking and collaboration. The syllabus supports learning through authentic art-making experiences and student choice, encouraging students to become progressively more independent art practitioners.  The course is designed for students who want to go on to further study of visual arts in higher education, as well as for those who are seeking lifelong enrichment through visual arts.

The aims of the arts subjects are to enable students to:

• Explore the diversity of the arts across time, cultures and contexts
• Develop as imaginative and skilled creators and collaborators
• Express ideas creatively and with competence
• Critically reflect on the process of creating and experiencing the arts
• Develop as informed, perceptive and analytical practitioners
• Enjoy lifelong engagement with the arts

In addition, the IB Visual Arts – ​Standard and Higher Level courses  aim to enable students to:

• Appreciate that art-making enhances knowledge, develops understanding and transforms ways of being
• Employ curiosity, creativity and dialogue to more openly engage with self, the world and others
• Draw on artmaking and artworks for their own, and their communities’ well-being and flourishing

Curriculum Model Overview

The visual arts course is a creative, practice-based course.

Students work in the classroom as they would an art studio. Art-making as inquiry is at the centre of the syllabus and students learn through three core areas – create, connect and communicate. Students gain a deeper understanding of the visual arts working through a variety of art-making forms, and develop a personal visual language as well as critical and curatorial skills and methods.

Visual Arts journals are used by students to generate, progress and develop their art-making inquiry. Students realise and resolve artworks to communicate with audiences. Understanding of context and cultural significance are also part of the curriculum, and students learn to consider the complex and dynamic relationships between artist, artwork, audience and context.

Assessment Model

At the end of the course, students select and organise visual and written materials to submit to the IB for online assessment- both SL and HL students curate and digitally submit three assessment tasks to evidence their learning.

All assessment tasks are non –examination based. Two tasks are externally assessed and one is internally assessed by the teacher and externally moderated by the IB.

Task 1 – is common to both SL and HL. All students complete the art-making inquiries portfolio.

Task 2 is designed differently for SL and HL to reflect the different allocation of teaching time at each level. SL students complete the connections study and HL students complete the artist project.

Task 3 – is the internal assessment and is focused on the student’s ability to create a coherent body of artworks. SL submit five resolved artworks whilst HL also submit five resolved artworks selected from a larger body of work.