A two-year creative pre-university program in Visual Art & Design, Multimedia, and Music & Sound — built to give students a university-ready portfolio and the AI literacy that admissions panels and employers now expect.
Impetus is a fully resourced two-year creative program your school can offer without developing any curriculum of its own. Shan Hai Group owns and maintains the curriculum; your school hosts and delivers it.
Students in Grades 10 and 11 work across three disciplines — Visual Art & Design, Multimedia, and Music & Sound — developing a personal creative voice and graduating with a portfolio of 6 to 10 pieces, complete with the process documentation that leading art and design schools ask for and most applicants cannot provide. The program runs alongside regular school: one 2-hour session per week, capped at 12 students.
Universities, international and domestic alike, have changed what they look for. Technical skill is no longer enough; admissions panels want to see how a student thinks, the reasoning behind the work, and evidence of sustained development over time. Most talented students reach the application stage with none of this. Impetus is built to produce exactly that record.
The precision it takes to describe and defend a creative decision is the same precision that makes AI tools genuinely useful — with people and with machines.
Students work across all three disciplines before declaring a focus, so the eventual specialisation is better-informed and genuinely chosen.
No exams. Assessment is entirely portfolio-based, judged on the quality of thinking and the ability to reflect on it honestly.
AI tools are used, evaluated, and questioned throughout — building a critical, nuanced relationship rather than uncritical reliance or avoidance.
Grounded in established research: interleaved learning (Bjork, UCLA), the Studio Thinking framework (Harvard Project Zero), and the UNESCO AI competency framework.
Two academic years of 18-week semesters, running alongside regular school. Where gaokao preparation is a factor, the program can run across Grades 10 and 11, leaving Grade 12 entirely free.
Cross-disciplinary exploration across all three fields. Students make work and begin building creative instincts.
Students develop a creative voice and declare a primary discipline at the close of the semester.
Specialist work in the declared discipline, culminating in the Signature Project — the program's most ambitious piece.
Curating, refining, and presenting a university application portfolio of 6 to 10 pieces, ending in a public Portfolio Showcase.
In the final year, students follow the track that matches their destination — the curriculum and creative training are shared; the portfolio preparation is tailored.
For international and English-medium schools. The portfolio and artist statement are prepared in English for applications to art and design universities in the UK, US, Australia, and beyond.
Mandarin-delivered, with international-style portfolio preparation for Sino-foreign cooperative programs and portfolio-assessed domestic institutions. Students targeting examination-only routes are referred to specialist providers.
At the end of the program, every student presents their completed portfolio at a formal public exhibition held at the school — attended by families, peers, and educators. Students present their work, explain their creative process, and respond to questions. It is the visible proof of two years of development: for families, the moment the investment becomes tangible; for the school, the most powerful demonstration of what its students are capable of — and the moment that builds the word-of-mouth that fills the next cohort.
Impetus is delivered on school premises under a licensing agreement with Shan Hai Group. The result is a fully resourced creative program with no curriculum development costs for the school.
Shan Hai Group owns, maintains, and continually updates the full curriculum, assessments, and resources — your school delivers a complete, externally developed program.
The school appoints a teacher; Shan Hai Group trains and certifies them before the first cohort begins, with in-person support during the program launch.
Quality assurance continues through regular remote check-ins and a formal review each semester, ensuring the program holds its standard cohort after cohort.
Request the full partnership proposal — including the curriculum framework, teacher requirements, and parent communication materials.