IB Group 6 · The Arts
Visual Arts
2027 syllabus · First assessment 2027
A practice-based course with no content syllabus — three core areas, seven assessment objectives and three digital tasks. Every card here is one prescribed definition, one formal requirement or one assessment criterion, so the portfolio, study, project and artwork rules are all in one place with their screen counts, word limits and marks.
A1. A1 The syllabus
What the course actually teaches: three core areas, the key terms of art-making as inquiry, and the seven assessment objectives that frame everything.
VAA1.1 — The three core areas
VAA1.1.1 · Create — This core area requires learning and teaching about nurturing art-making practice and developing a personal visual language.
VAA1.1.2 · Connect — This core area requires learning and teaching about situating art-making in personal, local and global contexts.
VAA1.1.3 · Communicate — This core area requires learning and teaching about sharing art-making with others.
VAA1.1.4 · Integrating the three areas — When each student develops their practice of art-making they learn within each area, but also across the three areas as these interconnect and overlap.
VAA2.1 — Art-making as inquiry: key terms
VAA2.1.1 · Artistic intentions — Intentions include the ideas, emotions and experiences that motivate, inform and shape art-making.
VAA2.1.2 · Creative strategies — Creative strategies are methods and approaches that artists use to manipulate ideas and imagery to generate new possibilities in their art-making.
VAA2.1.3 · Art-making forms — Art-making forms are broad categories of creative endeavour, such as painting, sculpture, ceramics, performance, installation, intervention, video art, digital art, photography, drawing and printmaking.
VAA2.1.4 · What "a variety" means — It is a requirement that students work in a variety of art-making forms and with a variety of creative strategies during the course.
VAA2.1.5 · Contexts and cultural significance — Artworks exist in a status of flux and are continuously redefined through the interactions of artist, audience and context.
VAA2.1.6 · Personal, local and global contexts — Art explored within context can be considered on personal, local and global levels, and these overlap.
VAA2.1.7 · Line(s) of inquiry — A line of inquiry is the thread that a student explores through their creative processes, framed as inquiry.
VAA2.1.8 · Visual language — A visual language enables artists to communicate meaning to audiences through their art-making in a way that is effective, meaningful and personal.
VAA2.1.9 · Critical analysis — Critical analysis is the process of examining and interpreting the formal and conceptual qualities and imagery of an artwork, examining how the artist’s intentions are realized and communicated to the audience(s).
VAA3.1 — The seven assessment objectives
VAA3.1.1 · Curate — To curate is to prepare visual (and written) materials to communicate meaning for an audience.
VAA3.1.2 · Investigate — To investigate is to research, but also to explore and experiment, consider and envisage new solutions, and to expand understanding.
VAA3.1.3 · Generate — To generate is to create new possibilities.
VAA3.1.4 · Situate — To situate is to consider an idea or form in relation to time and place.
VAA3.1.5 · Refine — To refine is to review and improve work through reflection, dialogue and critique.
VAA3.1.6 · Resolve — To resolve is to work through ideas to a point of completion.
VAA3.1.7 · Synthesize — To synthesize is to bring together disparate elements in meaningful combination.
B1. B1 The studio
How the course is worked: the studio and its structures, the journals every task draws on, and the forms and strategies students must show variety in.
VAB1.1 — Spaces and structures for learning
VAB1.1.1 · The classroom as studio — The overarching learning structure that this course adopts is defining the classroom as an art studio.
VAB1.1.2 · The seven structures for learning — The visual arts course invites teachers to adopt seven structures for learning, adapted from the Studio Thinking Project.
VAB2.1 — Visual arts journals
VAB2.1.1 · What the journals are — This guide does not refer to one visual arts journal but to the student’s journals: the term extends beyond the boundaries of a conventional sketchbook.
VAB2.1.2 · Journals and assessment — Journals are the main source from which to select evidence when preparing each of the assessment tasks.
VAB3.1 — Art-making forms
VAB3.1.1 · Two-dimensional forms — Created on a predominantly flat surface, these usually comprise drawing, graphics, painting and printmaking, or a combination.
VAB3.1.2 · Three-dimensional forms — Art that goes beyond the flat surface, encompassing depth, volume and weight.
VAB3.1.3 · Four-dimensional forms — Adding the dimensions of time and motion to an artwork, these forms include lens-based art-making as well as ephemeral/temporal and sequential art-making forms.
VAB4.1 — Creative strategies
VAB4.1.1 · The six categories — The TSM presents creative strategies grouped into six broad categories, following the work of Julia Marshall.
VAB4.1.2 · Transformative strategies — Transformative strategies promote notable, significant or complete changes in an image or object.
VAB4.1.3 · Combinatory strategies — Combinatory strategies involve the intentional combination of elements from multiple sources to create new images or objects, new meanings, or new forms and media.
VAB4.1.4 · Juxtaposition strategies — Juxtaposition strategies involve incorporating two or more (often disparate) visual qualities, images or objects to emphasize difference, create contrast or derive new meanings.
VAB4.1.5 · Extension strategies — Extension strategies involve elaborating and extrapolating subject matter, ideas and concepts to highlight meanings or to suggest or create new meanings.
VAB4.1.6 · Distillation strategies — Distillation strategies involve extracting the essence, the essential meaning or most significant aspect(s), from a complex idea.
VAB4.1.7 · Associative strategies — Associative strategies involve the artist making or suggesting associations between images, objects, subject matter and materials with ideas, themes and concepts for an audience.
C1. C1 The three tasks
What you actually submit: the rules common to every task, then task by task, requirements, structure, and every assessment criterion.
VAC1.1 — Rules that apply to every task
VAC1.1.1 · The assessment model — Each student submits three digital assessment tasks, both at SL and HL.
VAC1.1.2 · Screens and word limits — A screen is a "digital page". Where submitted materials exceed the screen or word limits, examiners are instructed to base their assessment solely on the materials that appear within the limits.
VAC1.1.3 · Academic integrity and referencing — It is a requirement for academic integrity that all images of artworks included in the assessment tasks are accompanied by details of the artwork reproduced.
VAC1.1.4 · Authenticity, duplication and the teacher’s role — All work submitted for assessment must be the student’s own, and teachers must certify the origin and authenticity of coursework.
VAC2.1 — Task 1: Art-making inquiries portfolio
VAC2.1.1 · What the task is — This task is common to SL and HL and focuses on the student’s art-making as inquiry.
VAC2.1.2 · Formal requirements — SL and HL students submit two mandatory files.
VAC2.1.3 · How to compile it — The portfolio is curated by each student in the second year of the course, when they have enough work to effectively evidence their art-making practice as inquiry.
VAC2.1.4 · Criterion A: Exploration and experimentation — To what level do the submitted visual and written materials evidence exploration and experimentation with a variety of art-making forms and creative strategies to develop a visual language?
VAC2.1.5 · Criterion B: Practical investigation — To what level do the submitted visual and written materials evidence practical investigation of the work of other artists to inform the student’s art-making?
VAC2.1.6 · Criterion C: Lines of inquiry — To what level do the submitted materials evidence the student’s use of inquiry questions or generative statements, and development of art-making through visually articulated line(s) of inquiry?
VAC2.1.7 · Criterion D: Critical review — To what level do the submitted materials evidence critical reflection, and refinement to enhance material and conceptual practices?
VAC3.1 — Task 2 SL: Connections study
VAC3.1.1 · What the task is — This is an SL-only task focused on the student situating one of their own resolved artworks and investigating significant connections for this chosen piece.
VAC3.1.2 · Formal requirements and the three sections — The PDF file is structured in discrete sections. Each student is free to decide how many screens they devote to each part.
VAC3.1.3 · How to compile it — The study must include visual documentation about the student’s chosen resolved artwork and the two selected artworks by different artists.
VAC3.1.4 · Criterion A: Connections with context(s) — To what level do the submitted materials evidence how the student’s chosen resolved artwork connects to their own context(s)?
VAC3.1.5 · Criterion B: Connections with artworks — To what level do the submitted materials evidence the connections between the student’s chosen resolved artwork and at least two artworks by different artists?
VAC3.1.6 · Criterion C: Investigation of cultural significance — To what level do the submitted materials evidence understanding of the cultural significance of the two artworks by different artists?
VAC4.1 — Task 2 HL: Artist project
VAC4.1.1 · What the task is — This is a stand-alone, HL-only task focused on creating and situating in context an artwork that the student ideates and realizes as a project of their choice.
VAC4.1.2 · Formal requirements and the five sections — The PDF file must be structured in discrete and clearly identified sections, and students must state the word count for each section.
VAC4.1.3 · The video — A short video documents the project artwork as it was realized in context.
VAC4.1.4 · Criterion A: Proposal — To what level do the materials evidence the student’s intentions for the project as situated in the chosen context, and awareness of that context demonstrated through investigation?
VAC4.1.5 · Criterion B: Connections — To what level do the materials evidence the connections between the project and at least two artworks by different artists, and understanding of their cultural significance?
VAC4.1.6 · Criterion C: Dialogues — To what level do the materials evidence the student’s responses to critical dialogues to refine their project for context and audience(s)?
VAC4.1.7 · Criterion D: Curation and realization in context — To what level do the materials evidence the realization of the student’s finalized intentions through synthesis of concept and form to communicate with a real or potential audience in the chosen context?
VAC4.1.8 · Criteria E and F, Evaluation and future development — To what level do the materials evidence evaluation of how successful the realization was, and new directions informed by that evaluation?
VAC5.1 — Task 3 SL: Resolved artworks
VAC5.1.1 · What the task is — This SL-only task focuses on the student’s ability to create a coherent body of work: five resolved artworks demonstrating their best achievements in communicating artistic intentions coherently.
VAC5.1.2 · Formal requirements — Students submit six mandatory files.
VAC5.1.3 · The rationale — The rationale accompanies the body of resolved artworks and must not exceed 700 words.
VAC5.1.4 · Criterion A: Coherence of body of artworks — To what level do the submitted materials evidence a coherent body of five resolved artworks?
VAC5.1.5 · Criterion B: Conceptual realization — To what level do the submitted materials evidence synthesis of concept and form to communicate artistic intentions?
VAC5.1.6 · Criterion C: Technical resolution — To what level do the five resolved artworks evidence resolution in the application of media and use of formal qualities to communicate artistic intentions?
VAC6.1 — Task 3 HL: Selected resolved artworks
VAC6.1.1 · What the task is — Each student selects five resolved artworks from at least eight of their works to demonstrate their best achievements in communicating their artistic intentions coherently.
VAC6.1.2 · Formal requirements — Students submit six mandatory files, with the PDF structured using the HL submissions template or an equivalent.
VAC6.1.3 · The rationale and selection chart — The rationale must not exceed 700 words and includes a selection chart with images of the five selected artworks and three that were not selected.
VAC6.1.4 · The artwork texts — Students situate each of their selected artworks through critical analysis, considering how technical, stylistic and conceptual choices place each piece within their own body of artworks and in relation to the work of other artists.
VAC6.1.5 · Criterion A: Coherence of body of selected artworks — To what level do the materials evidence the selection process of five resolved artworks from the student’s wider production, and a coherent body of five selected resolved artworks?
VAC6.1.6 · Criteria B and C, Conceptual realization and technical resolution — To what level do the materials evidence synthesis of concept and form, and resolution in the application of media and use of formal qualities?
VAC6.1.7 · Criterion D: Understanding of artistic context — To what level do the materials evidence critical analysis to situate each of the selected five resolved artworks?
VAC7.1 — Digital submission of artworks
VAC7.1.1 · Capturing artworks — Students submit five digital images or video files to present each of the artworks as part of their body of resolved artworks.
VAC7.1.2 · Required details and supporting images — Details of title, medium and size must be provided for each resolved artwork submitted for assessment.
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