Women make up 65% of program grads; 80% hire rate at top agencies and brands
Following a successful first year, ONE School, the groundbreaking free portfolio school for Black creatives, has opened applications for its fall 2021 programs run out of Atlanta and Chicago. The results-oriented online program has already made a substantial contribution to adding diversity to the industry: six cohorts run out of Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York prepared 84 new Black creatives–65% of them women–to enter the industry in its first year.
ONE School has an 80% hire rate, with many of the 30 inaugural graduates landing jobs at leading agencies and brands including R/GA, Gut, Droga5, Translation, VMLY&R, Mojo Supermarket, Area 23, Spotify and Squarespace.
ONE School will continue to be run by award-winning Spotify creative director Oriel Davis-Lyons, who came up with the concept and co-founded the free program with The One Club for Creativity’s Creative Development department.
Due to the hands-on mentoring aspect of the program, fall enrollment in the Atlanta and Chicago programs is limited to 15 students in each. The Atlanta cohort will be run by Dominique Wynne, award-winning associate creative director at Spotify, and Chicago will again be headed by Lewis Williams, chief creative officer, and Terrence Burrell, VP, creative director, at Burrell Communications.
To be eligible for ONE School, students cannot have previously attended a portfolio school. Applicants are selected based on their raw creativity, passion and commitment so as not to discourage those with no prior knowledge of advertising.
“With two programs done, the school is proving that our principles–to be unapologetically Black from start to finish–actually work,” said Davis-Lyons, who before his current role at Spotify held creative positions at R/GA and Droga5 in New York and Colenso BBDO in New Zealand. “Our grads are now working at the industry’s top agencies and brands, and having an impact on the world. The goal now is to make sure ONE School goes from strength to strength so that in 10 years time, our grads come back as teachers and keep the cycle going.”
The free online school runs two nights a week for 16 weeks, with students getting 10 briefs over the course covering everything from OOH to Innovation and Data-Driven Storytelling. Later weeks of the course are devoted to portfolio building, judging by top agency professionals, awarding of the top student portfolios and job placement.
“There is still a great deal of work to be done,” said Bob Isherwood, head of The One Club’s Creative Development department. “ONE School is a stake in the ground, and we’re building upon this foundation and cementing program sustainability to continue bringing creatively excellent Black graduates to advertising for years to come.”
The One Club has a track record of creating ongoing programs that help address the ad industry’s lack of diversity. Other long-running DEI initiatives from the nonprofit organization include more than a decade of annual Where Are All The Black People diversity conferences and career fairs, global Creative Boot Camps and mentorship programs for diverse college students, the WE ARE ONE poster design initiative rallying creatives around the world to take a collective stand against racism and intolerance, the COLORFUL global grant program to help young BIPOC creatives advance their careers, the Paid Internship Pledge to help aspiring BIPOC creatives get a foot in the door at agencies, and introduction of The One Show Fusion Pencil and ADC 100th Annual Awards Fusion Cube, the industry’s first global awards to recognize great work that best incorporates DEI principles in both creative content and the team that made it.
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More