Creativity confusion for CAS

[mcm46]

Hello there. So I am starting CAS this year and I know what i could do for action and service. However, I am having difficulty in what I should do fofr creativity. I have this idea of making school bags, sports bags and other little DIY projects; I want to video tape me doing these projects and then when I complete them I want to donate them to local charities. I wasn't sure whether this this would qualify for creativity or not sincec what I am doing are projects that I will then give away. Any and all replies and advice are much appreciated and welcomed, thank you.

[ib1123]

Yes, that should be fine for creativity. In fact, it could even double as your project since it sounds like it will take a prolonged period of time to complete, and it incorporates both creativity and service.

[mcm46]

Oh, ok. I see what you mean. Thank you for the reply. I could do more than one thing for creativity, correct? Say, like learn another language on top of making bags and such.

[sameera95]

Yes you can, and I like the idea of your DIY bag project, if you donate this to charity and you do this over a long period of time then you can count it as your project I think

[Arrowhead]

Hey!

Just to clarify one point for your own knowledge: The IB does not have strict hard-and-fast rules about what can and cannot count for CAS. There is no centralised mechanism or system for this that the IB oversees. All the IB does is set out the basic rules and guidelines on what CAS is about and how schools should go about implementing CAS and ensuring that it's being completed.

The individual rules about what can and cannot count as a CAS activity is something that only your school's IB Coordinator or CAS Coordinator (if you have one) can answer for you. These rules are not set in stone and they vary from school to school.

For example, in my school, just going to the gym to exercise did not count for Action. But, if my friends and I organised a 'gym crew' and regularly worked out together, those hours would count for Action. However, a friend of mine at a different school easily got all the hours she needed by hitting the gym thrice a week on her own.

Similarly, at my school, you were not allowed to get more than 15 hours from a single activity no matter how much ever time you devoted to it; at my friend's school, you couldn't get more than 8 per activity! This was a way of ensuring that even the laziest IB students had to keep up with at least 2-3 extracurriculars at all times to fulfil their CAS requirements.

So what the particular rules about CAS are, the acceptability of certain activities over others, all of that will be determined by your school individually. One of the creativity activities you listed was learning a new language, at my school that would not count for Creativity, for example. But it may count at yours.

At the end of the day, CAS is not something that the IB sees and moderates, this is something internally managed by your school. All the IB sees is a 'tick mark' against your name that you completed your CAS obligations according to your school, and the IB doesn't question this.

[ib1123]

I agree with almost everything Arrowhead said above. The only point I want to add is that the IB does collect a sample of students' CAS journals to check that the school isn't doing any dodgy stuff by ticking people off who haven't done anything, in the same way that they collect a sample of IAs to moderate. Importantly though, there's no mark associated with the journals; it's just a way to make sure you're completing the general CAS requirements in an appropriate manner.

[mcm46]

Thanks for the advice you guys. I guess in the end i should just see if my IB coordinator approves of my idea, huh? I'll get right on that and hope he says i can, but if he doesn't then I'll still do it anyways because I've been wanting to do something like this for a while.