School of Life

With the tagline “Ideas to live by” this self styled “Cultural enterprise” offers an interesting range of services including:

evening and weekend courses, holidays to unexpected locations, stigma-free psychotherapy, secular sermons, conversation meals, a floating faculty of experts and a new kind of literary consultancy service called bibliotherapy.

The school operates out of what looks like an awfully well designed shop in what they describe as “a thriving and bohemian part of central London”. Yes, the wank level is high here, and it keeps on coming, the shop itself is described as being organised “as a cultural apothecary” and the people who guide you to enlightenment are described as “some of the brightest thinkers and artists at work today”. Big claims, but as I adhere to the Charlie Brooker school of thought when it comes to one of their shining lights, Alain de Botton, i’m not sure if I entirely agree.

I support the school’s aim of creating a place where intelligent, curious and sociable people can meet and talk and expand their minds, it can be a tough ask to find like minded people as we grow older and find ourselves increasingly surrounded by borderline retarded workmates, but I fear there would be a very high quotient of pretentious twats enrolled in some of these courses, especially given the price range.

Cynicism aside, as mentioned earlier, there’s some great design going on in the shop and on the site, and reading the site does fill one with a sense of wanting to improve and search out new horizons. Check it out here

The always fantastic Monocle has a cool little video piece on the school here

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