The One Club for Creativity–a nonprofit organization supporting the global creative community, and producer of The One Show, ADC Annual Awards and Creative Week–has named Bob Isherwood to serve as director of professional development,
A creative legend, Isherwood in his new role will bolster existing club programs such as Creative Leaders Retreats and Executive Creative Summits, and develop a range of new global initiatives focused on professional development for creatives at all levels.
Isherwood’s creative career spans more than three decades including 22 years at Saatchi & Saatchi, where he served 11 years as the agency’s worldwide creative director and as chair of its worldwide creative board. Under his leadership, the network was consistently ranked one of the most creative in the world, winning more than 8,000 major awards for clients such as P&G and Toyota, for whom Isherwood served as creative director for the global launch of Toyota Prius.
He is an inductee in the Clio Hall of Fame, recipient of the Clio Lifetime Achievement Award and British Design and Art Directors Gold Award for Advertising, and for many years ran Saatchi’s New Directors Showcase at Cannes. Since leaving the agency world, he taught advertising at Vanderbilt University and cofounded Dialog Health, a mobile messaging company created to improve patient satisfaction, compliance and adherence in healthcare.
“Bob’s vision, leadership and pursuit of creative excellence has been an inspiration to thousands of our people around the world,” said Kevin Swanepoel, CEO, The One Club. “We’re thrilled and lucky to have him as a member of the team, where he will raise our professional development programming to the next level.”
“Education has been my focus for quite a while now,” said Isherwood, who served as an adjunct professor for six years at Vanderbilt University where developed his own course on “Creative Advertising.” “For the past few years, I’ve had ongoing discussions with Kevin and Tony (Gulisano, global chief growth officer) about where the current education system falls short for our industry. That led me to joining the club because we are like minded on the gaps we can fill.”
Working closely with Gulisano, Isherwood has put into motion his first initiative which has been to develop a series of “Creative Perspectives” streaming sessions from top creative thinkers from around the world. The sessions make up nearly a third of the club’s Creative Month 2020 online programming, running free of charge May 4-29.
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More