IB Visual Arts Art Making Inquiries Contexts

Help your IB Visual Arts students see that the same artwork can mean very different things to different people with this ready to use worksheet set based on Willats’ socially interactive model of practice.

Designed for the new IB Visual Arts course, this two page resource introduces the four key parts of the model: artist, artwork, audience and context, then guides students to apply it to real situations and to their own portfolios.

Page 1: Introducing Willats’ model
Clear, student friendly explanation of the model and why it matters in IB Visual Arts
Guided prompts for students to define artist, artwork, audience, context in their own words
Space to add local examples from school, home and city so they can connect the theory to their own visual culture

Page 2: Two curations, two audiences
Structured activity where students curate the same set of artworks for two different audiences, choosing from contexts such as a school corridor, local gallery, Old Quarter tourist space, university portfolio review or IB examiner. You can adapt this to your own context!

Journal prompts focusing on intention, context and audience, encouraging thoughtful captions and curatorial decisions

Extension task linking directly to their Art Making Inquiries Portfolio, with scaffolded questions about their own in progress work

A final sentence stem that supports students to write a clear generative statement for future experimentation
How to use

Print as a double sided worksheet, share digitally, or project and have students respond in their sketchbooks. The only thing you need to add is an image set, which could be:

artworks by local artists in your area, or
artworks made by other students in your school.

Encourage students to get creative with their selections and to revisit this activity when planning tests, captions and exhibition layouts.

Perfect for
IB DP Visual Arts (Year 1 and Year 2)
Teaching contexts and cultural significance
Supporting students to plan experiments, write captions and make purposeful curatorial choices
Stretching higher ability KS4 or KS5 art classes who are exploring audience and context.