Kylie Hannah (far left), Ray Black and John Bevins with the Sydney ‘Class of 2021’
Copy School is back and it’s, yep, new and improved. First come, first served – register at copyschool.org.
Confirmed tutors for Melbourne, 7-11 November, are Sarah McGregor, Hilary Badger, Jess Wheeler, and Tristan Graham and for Sydney, 14-18 November, Andy Fleming, Jonathan Kneebone, Ralph Van Dijk and Esther Clerehan. More to be announced in the next few days.
Melbourne co-chair Chris Taylor (pictured below), has devised a formal curriculum, “Well, it is a school,” he said.
Says John Bevins, co-chair, Copy School: “It’s a decade or two’s on-the-job learning condensed into a week. Chris has put a lot of energy into a curriculum designed to prepare fledgling writers for high flight in an industry of turbulent change. Some of what will be taught are fundamentals that took me nearly twenty years to learn — and that was with the luxury of senior mentors who populated the industry in my early analogue days. The rest of it, the kind of demands that digitally driven persuasion dishes up daily, who could have predicted?”
Creative directors Will Edwards and — thanks to Esther Clerehan — Fee Millist, Georgie Waters, Kiah Nicholas and Genevieve Hoey each provided generous insights that have helped hone the curriculum.
Copy School lost its generous sponsor last year with the demise of NewsMediaWorks. It’s now been set-up by Bevins as an independent, sustainable not-for-profit designed to uphold the ethos of its founder Ray Black:
World-class masterclasses, nine over one week each year in Sydney and Melbourne, designed especially for junior or aspiring copywriters.
Black has always been heartened by the way successful creative people “give back”, as he says, to teach the industry. That tradition continues with this year’s high-profile tutors.
Chris Taylor, co-chair with the Mebourne ‘Class of 2019’
Taylor has stayed on pro bono and is co-chair with Bevins. Taylor, a former Melbourne speaker for Copy School, took over from Mark Sharman to run Melbourne and came recommended by Black when Black passed his beloved baton to Bevins.
Says Taylor: “If we don’t pass on the old ways from the before times, my generation will be forced to endure ads for stairlifts and retirement homes written by robots. Personally, I think we all deserve better — so this whole ‘pro-bono’ stuff isn’t as altruistic as it seems. Besides, I get my name mentioned in the same breath as John Bevins so I’m honestly just happy to be involved.”
World-class masterclasses, nine over one week each year in Sydney and Melbourne, designed especially for junior or aspiring copywriters.
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