IB Arts Classes: Performances and Portfolios

Welcome to the world of IB Arts classes! Luckily, IB cares a lot about well-rounded education, so there are a lot of IB Arts course options. At my school, we offer four: Theater, Visual Art, Music and Film. Obviously, each art class differs in terms of your content, but the structure of the classes are pretty similar. Here, we’re going to do a very brief overview of what IB Arts classes look like and how they differ from other IB courses. I have taken HL Theater and SL Film, but my knowledge of the other two classes is coming from friends’ accounts and a brief glance over the topic guides so as always, defer to your teachers and personal knowledge.

IB Arts classes are considered Group 6 classes, meaning that in a full two year schedule, you would be afforded one Arts class. For schools that allow 1-year SL courses, the opportunity opens up to take additional SL arts classes if students desire to do so.

The best part about IB Arts, in my opinion, is that we do not sit an end-of-course exam. This is a massive benefit in May when you might have 5 or 6 IB exams rapid-fire in the span of a few weeks– having one less subject to study can help you to do better on your other exams. The tradeoff to this is that instead of an exam, you work across the school year to compile a portfolio based on the assessment projects assigned by IB. The number and structure of these pieces vary between classes and between SL and HL, but the ideas behind them are the same: exploring and experimenting with aspects of your type of art. Many projects have to do with theoretical or analytical approaches to art, devising your own art and evidencing that process, or collaborating with others to create art.

The actual format of these assessments will typically be some combination of work produced and a written explanation or reflection of said work. For Music and Theater, this might look like a video of a student devised performance accompanied by an explanation of intentions. Visual Art might be a portfolio of works with a description of the creation process. Some can be more research based, such as HL theater’s theory project. There are long, detailed explanations for the assessments in each course’s subject guide, and ideally, your teacher will walk you through each project’s rubric and requirements.

SL students, as in most classes, will typically have a lighter workload. As of current rubrics, in film, theater and music, this looks like having one less assessment project. For visual art, there are 3 assessment projects for each, but HL has some extra steps in a few places. Because the arts are subjective, this doesn’t necessarily make the class “harder” to excel in, it just requires students to make deeper connections and applications across their discipline. 

One final note on the assessment format is the difference between an internal and an external assessment. As you may already know through your STEM classes, an internal assessment is a paper or project that is graded by your teacher and then moderated by IB. This means that IB will take a sample of the papers from each class (say 7 out of 40) and re-grade them. They will then adjust all 40 grades based on how close the teacher was to the IB grades. If the teacher is too lenient, the grades are moderated down. Too harsh, and they are moderated up. External assessments, on the other hand, are never graded by teachers, only IB graders. Teachers are permitted to give minimal guidance and help students stay on track with deadlines, but their opinion of the student's work doesn’t affect the grade at all. 

IB arts classes are a mix of internal and external assessments. The 2024 HL Theater rubric has one IA and 3 EAs, but other courses have different mixes. This shouldn’t affect the process for completing your projects very much, but it’s generally a good idea to know how each project is being graded. This will also affect how you submit your assignments later on (direct to the IBO versus into an intermediary such as Managebac). Technically, all of the exams that you sit in May for other classes are also external assessments, but it’s kind of implied that your teachers aren’t grading your May exams, so they don’t usually refer to them by that term.

Overall, the arts classes let you have a lot of creativity in terms of creating and presenting art that you enjoy. These are by far the least restrictive IB classes in terms of giving students the freedom to explore the subject area. However, it's important to make sure that you are sticking to the rubric as much as possible because, once again, art is subjective. The closer you stay to the rubric, the more difficult it is to argue that your art should be deducted marks for whatever reason. Mostly just remember to have fun and treat the projects like an exploration of an area that you (hopefully) enjoy!