Visual arts updates

The new DP visual arts course will be launched in February 2025. First assessment will take place in May 2027.

Below you will find an overview of the course updates. For a technical breakdown of the DP curriculum and assessment methods for this course, read the visual arts subject brief.

You also can view information on the current visual arts course.

To view all subject briefs, visit the DP curriculum page.

Overview of the new course

Art-making as inquiry is at the centre of the new DP visual arts course, which remains a creative, practice-based course that can be adapted to different contexts and cohorts of students.

This course fosters creativity, communication, critical thinking and collaboration. Students learn that by making art, they are empowered to engage, transform and emerge as individuals and members of a community. The higher level (HL) course offers a solid preparation for students who wish to continue their studies or career in the visual arts, but the syllabus more broadly equips students with skills essential in a rapidly evolving world.

In the new course, the aims, assessment objectives and assessment tasks are fully aligned and better connected with the syllabus content. This is now organized in three core areas—create, connect and communicate—which are integrated in art-making as inquiry.

Teachers and students are invited to transform the classroom into a visual arts studio, a collaborative, inclusive, creative and conceptually rich space where students develop their art and are supported in becoming increasingly independent art practitioners.

The new syllabus enhances the authenticity of learning experiences in DP visual arts and more clearly defines how learning in this subject is non-linear, generative and interactive.

The creative process remains unprescribed and flexible, and the new course more clearly fosters the synthesis of conceptual and material practices. Students must engage with a variety of art-making forms, but also with creative strategies.

The new course explicitly invites students to reflect on the relationship between artist, artwork, context and audience to develop their understanding and reflexivity. A clear definition of cultural significance supports teaching and learning.

Changes to the assessment model

The assessment objectives have been redesigned and now are embedded in the creative process. They are clearly defined to guide both teachers and students through the course from beginning to end. The assessment model maintains the structure with three assessment tasks, but these are redesigned with a reduction in the number of resolved artworks and screens required.

Word counts have been introduced to guarantee a balance between visual and written evidence in the student’s submissions and a greater emphasis on art-making.

There now is a clearer differentiation between standard level (SL) and HL assessment requirements, and these now better reflect the allocation of teaching time at each level.

The new tasks

1. The art-making inquiry portfolio, now a common SL and/HL task, introduces the requirement for students to present evidence of how, guided by artistic intentions, they worked through one or more personal lines of inquiry to develop a visual language (and not only to resolve artworks), while engaging with a variety of art-making forms and creative strategies.
2. The SL connection study task and the HL artist project task require students to engage in research and develop an understanding of cultural significance in the visual arts. These completely new tasks encourage students to link their research about artworks and contexts with their own art-making more authentically than the previous comparative study. The requirement for students to situate their own artworks in context and to investigate the connections with artworks by other artists is at the core of both these SL and HL tasks, but these are differentiated to reduce SL students’ workloads and reflect the different breadth and depth of HL and SL courses.

The artist project requires the sustained realization and curation in context of a stand-alone artwork informed by connections with artworks by other artists and by feedback. In the second year, HL students now have more autonomy and develop a project of their choice from start to end, thinking about what and how they want to communicate to their audience(s) in a specific context. This allows them to further develop their practice, finding direction and demonstrating an understanding of cultural significance.

The connections study allows SL students to engage with situating their own artwork but without the need to create a new piece. They choose one of their resolved artworks from their body of artworks submitted for internal assessment and evidence the connections between this piece and their own context, as well as with artworks by other artists, demonstrating understanding of cultural significance.

3. The internal assessment (IA) task is focused on a coherent body of five resolved artworks both at HL and SL. The number of artworks is the same at HL and SL, but the task is differentiated. Extra requirements for HL students include evidencing the selection process of the five resolved artworks from their wider production (images of three non-selected artworks must also be included in the rationale), and demonstrating critical analysis and the ability to situate each of their pieces through a short accompanying text, an artwork-tex

The focus of the IA task remains on the coherence of the student’s body of resolved artworks, considering its conceptual realization and technical resolution. The task no longer requires the documentation of an exhibition. This is to relieve stress at the end of the course and to support student work in a wider variety of art-making forms. Sharing their own artworks remains a core structure for learning, and schools must continue to support visual arts students in exhibiting and celebrating their achievements. Exhibiting is repositioned within a  the course and continues to require time and resources—but how these are employed can be organized with greater flexibility to support authentic learning.