How We Teach / What We're Teaching
Anyone who has taken a class with us or Idil Sukan over the years knows how much we put into this, how absolutely, indignantly passionate we get about everything. But specifically we are most keen to imbue all our sessions with not just 'learning' but HOW to learn, how to think critically, how to engage with what you learn, how to put it into practice. It's up to you to then grow from our session and implement what you learn into your own practice. Each of our trainees/mentees/students will take different things from what we teach, will work in different ways, and mix in different cocktails of what you are learning from all your different teachers. Even if you disagree with something we teach, it is about discovering HOW you disagree that will make you grow as a creative individual.
We aim to not be didactic and teach you that LEARNING itself is a creative practice that you have to learn how to engage with, it is a skill in itself. Anyway, we could go on about this (we DO go on about this(!!!)) but just remember - you should not expect or demand that any of your teachers, whether us or anyone else, should 'solve a problem' for you.
A few students (thankfully not many) have this weird expectation, an entitlement that something should be solved the second they have left a class, and you know, learning is difficult, trying to figure out what to do with art, design, your career etc is difficult, and we get it. But you gotta get rid of these kinds of ideas if you have them. Teachers, we believe, are here to simply to facilitate YOU listening to yourself, facilitate you to further critically evaluate your OWN practice - get you to start understanding how to solve problems yourself, but... actually more than that, critically evaluate whether those 'problems' really are problems, or just your own fears - or you just being avoidant of not facing up to something else, something really really fundamental that would... Urgh... sometimes to start something new, to really blossom... it means letting go of normalised structures, normalised dynamics in your own life, it means STOPPING certain narratives that you have been taught about yourself.
URGH. There is a lot. We'll go through this in class because it is... fundamental, we see it all the time in students, ALL THE TIME. E.g. they are utterly blocked, don't know why, and it just turns out it is extremely clear their parent or partner, housing, etc is an absolute bully to them or some other normalised environmental situation, but you or they could never ever ever admit to it, so they go their whole life being blocked.
As I said, we really will go on about this. Our classes are here to challenge you and they are typically NOT like other classes you may have had. We're interested in getting really into WHY we create, what shapes that, and what 'creating' is anyway and what it means to be in conversation with our own 'practice' - practice being a noun as well as a verb.
We are interested in DISCOVERY through PRACTICE. Discovery of ourselves, discovery of our own creativity and art and design being a mirror into our own lives. Yes. Yes, absolutely, it sounds wild and pretentious etc etc but we are serious, this is so so so so important. We are interested in creating environments, spaces, moments where creativity becomes inevitable, where decision-making evaporates, where you FIND YOURSELF making work that speaks to you and everyone else who engages with it. It's kind of wonderful and seems so easy and yet is we believe one of the most difficult things in the world.
When we look at a lot of other 'refunds policies' on schools we often see some version of the phrase "we want you to be completely happy" etc. So here's the thing, why... argh. Happiness is fleeting, momentary, ephemeral, so bound by so many winds of what on earth happened today for whatever reason, it is also so tethered to different expectations and different neurodivergent needs. Listen, happiness is great, that is nice to aspire to. But critical thinking, evaluating your own normalisations and practices.... that can be in the short term/immediate term INCREDIBLY EXISTENTIAL. It can be brain-breaking, a bit scary, wild, you might feel immense regret or panic - we understand that we will have to help you rein those feelings in or give you tools to figure out what to do with those new feelings if they come. So we're not trying to 'make you happy', why would we, we don't just want to keep you treading water ticking off 'training courses' in your flailing attempts to LinkedIn CV yourself into perceived tick-boxing notions of success. Don't try and hide it. We recognise students within seconds who are the ones desperately collecting 'certificates' & 'qualifications' as a poetically advanced form of essentially procrastination. (Not that we think procrastination even exists, but... that is another endless essay that we will write to avoid doing laundry).
So. We're trying, really trying to do something more important and meaningful than just throw certificates around to tick boxes. Aargh, we're trying. We hope that it will set you on a path that does not rely on ephemeral moments of 'happiness'. Instead we want to help you get on a path of being able to rely on your own critical thinking, evaluate your own work, define your own metrics of success, and ultimately how to define and pursue your own unique feelings of joy. That reliability, the practice, repetition.
So we are LOOKING to constantly critique our practice and our frameworks and teach you how to do the same. This is not often taught in a lot of schools or training. So we don't think they're 'traditionally' difficult but learning how to think critically, especially about your own point of view, your own frameworks, evaluating your 'habits' as 'practice' etc etc - well, that is crazy difficult. The feedback we get boils down to basically: "omg my brain hurts". I mean, uh, medically speaking aside - this is a good thing.
So we can't be responsible for refunds after the sessions -! We hope you will love it and we do think you will love it, we hope of course you'll 'be happy' - but if you find it hard or unusual then please sit with it and let it sink in, it might take a long time or it might affect you undetected, be in conversation with it, talk about it with your peers, write about it, make art, make MARKS. There are no refunds anyway! So you may as well just try and let it affect you.
We have found so FEW teachers and schools actively teaching this way. Believe us, we've looked. It is really, really hard to find teachers that do it, and really it is a lottery that totally depends on the teacher you happen to get, even (especially? eeep) if you enrol even in a top school like ---Arts who on the whole prioritise skills (don't hate us ---Arts, we do love you really) - so we are actively advertising that Ottodork entirely teaches this way so you know that this is what you will get. We may not be the right teacher for you, but finding us and learning from us will allow you to grow and get closer to who your right teachers are. AND - ultimately, do not think of 'art' or 'creativity' as a problem to solve, just keep PRACTICING.
Anyway, we will go on.
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