Creative Resource is proud to support the creative industry in developing skills. We are co-founders and sponsors of School of Thought, which returns to Leeds for the third time.
School of Thought is famed for being a competitive course for brave and creative thinkers here in the north. Winners and participants go on to do amazing things.
School Of Thought is a weekly, evening programme to help creatives flex their muscle by challenging them to crack and present big ideas every week. It is as much a competition as it is a training programme, with the best performer over the 12 weeks winning a trip to Cannes Lions. This really raises the stakes and you can see that in the pressure the creatives put themselves under to perform each week.
School Of Thought really forces the point of idea over execution. The rule is ideas can only be presented with pen and paper. No mockups. No design. Just pure thought. It is a real democratiser and it forces people out from the comfort of their computers to rely on nothing more than their brain.
Most of the people that do School Of Thought are junior to mid-weight creatives already working in the industry, Designers, Art Directors, Copywriters – but we’ve had Senior people, Planners, Marketers, Account Handlers, etc, too. Apart from the amazing prize, they do it to challenge themselves, improve and sometimes get exposure to the sort of briefs that they don’t get to work on in their day job.
The format is, every week they visit a different agency:
- Monday evening a senior person from the agency gives a talk to the students about the creative process and developing ideas in respect to their speciality and the topic for the week.
- At the end of the session we hand out a brief for them to respond to, in line with the specialism of the agency and Monday’s talk. We write the brief with input from whoever is running the session. These briefs are kept intentionally simple, single-minded and open enough for them to really explore.
- Thursday evening the students return to pitch their ideas. This is a fun and energetic session. It can be exhausting hearing so many ideas in a short space of time and giving feedback on them, but it really does give you a buzz!
The Monday session generally runs from 6.30-7.30pm and Thursday sessions generally run from 6.30pm-8.30pm. Most of the people on the course come straight from work, so most agencies lay on some pizza/sandwiches.
At the end of the 12 weeks, we throw a big party, show off all the ideas developed and announce the winner!
Are you up to the challenge?
School of Thought returns to Leeds and applications are open now!
Good luck.