How Taking Art at MIS Expands Your Knowledge and Creativity

When people hear the word art, a painting is the image that always comes to mind, but what if it was more than that?

As a person who takes art, let me paint you a new picture.

Art envisions an abyss of media, techniques and even history. To give you some specific content, printmaking including monographic and monoprints all fall under the broad concept of art. I am sure you have never heard of any of those media because I didn’t either when I was first introduced to it, which is exactly why I am writing this article in the first place.

As a student who studies art, I am honoured to say we have covered so many units exploring a variety of media and learned a lot about the techniques on how to use them and how to improve the overall final work of art. This isn’t only about expanding your artistic skills to become an artist in the future, this is about exposing students to new experiences, allowing them to learn a lot of new things that they have never even heard of. I know you might think this is the same with all the other subjects, but not really. Like math, art is like a different language, the only difference is how you interpret it.

I will now show you some art works and different media explored in the 2024/2025 MYP art program.

I know you are probably thinking that they are only drawings, but the thought and learning process behind these art works is incredible. Now let’s hear a few words from an art teacher and students’ part of the art program.

Apart from learning new media, techniques and styles, art teaches you a broad range of important life skills, whether learning to be resilient, because as much as art can be enjoyable and relaxing, it is not always exactly an easy walk or learning to acquire a creative perspective of thinking about things.

“As an artist you learn to think outside of the box” Ms. Lior, Visual Art teacher.

You would think this is a normal everyday life skill, but not everyone owns it, for example AI doesn’t, and in a world of technology, this skill could be considerably useful. And not just creativity itself, but if applied to a real-life context, “Creativity is very useful, useful in almost every job as not necessarily drawing,” as Chloe B., Grade 9, explained. A specific example of this would be a student part of the diploma program that said, “I chose to take art in the DP because I want to study costume design,” Franziska Z., Grade 11.

As you can see, art isn’t only about drawing, but it’s about, I quote Ms. Lior, “The clothes that you’re wearing, the furniture we are sitting on, the room that we are in, the car you’re driving, the house you live in.” If you are afraid that art is not compensated as much as a hobby, trust me, prejudice can sometimes shock you.