By David Korhonen

sCahpter One

What a first week. This was both an amazing and a very tiring week at SCA. I didn’t expect much when I came to London in the first place. I was afraid that it would be like bullshit or way too deep to me. But instead, I found fantastic people and an exciting way of teaching. In France, we are not used to those interactives learning. We are not used to having a classroom full of energic and kind people.  And it’s really inspiring. The way you are, the way you think. Thank you, guys.

About courses, I remember the first day was the hardest because it was the first “only English” day and because it was about listening, which require a lot of focus. It was also the day we had to start remembering everyone’s name (which I think I kind of got today), and there is a lot of people with names I’ve never heard about.

Wednesday was great. We started with improv’, and I was a bit worried about this one because I feel like it’s hard for me to improvise in French, so how would it be in English? But in the end,  exercises were about spontaneity more than storytelling. At least the first ones. Which I enjoyed a lot because we were part of it and it was very different from what I’m used to. For the storytelling exercises (the duo and the improvised story) I felt bad for my partners because I sensed that they wanted to make creative and out of the box stories, but my English level prevents me from doing more. And I also didn’t get some words on the exercise were you had to complete your partner’s sentence (one word by one), and it’s a bit tough to complete a sentence you haven’t understand.

Then we went for the talk with Ben. Fascinating talk with a lot of insight into it. I’m very interested in how the brain works and I had some courses about it last year. It’s captivating and scary at the same time. Anyway, when he talked about monkey and human,  I related so much on my experiences, that’s almost unbelievable not to have known that. And his life’s point of view was also very fresh and mindful.

Lastly, it was poetry with Deanna. I was waiting for this one because I did some French poetry a year ago and wanted to see how it will go. We went through cool and friendly exercises which also help us to know each other.  And we ended up with the sentences about reflection subject on our personal life to finally craft poetry. There again, I felt useless for my mates by not being able to create great sentences or helping them on the mash-up. Besides that feeling (Sorry guys), it was probably my favourite day for now. I learned a lot and liked those first group exercises. I am really looking forward to the real stuff to begin.

Then comes Thursday, the visit’s day. I went to Tate Modern, which I haven’t toured before, with my group. I was most interested in the painting, which was impressive by their balance and composition — notably, the room with pictures which used only the white colour. Awesome by their use of texture and shapes. There was also some lovely font’s paint in there. In the end, we went to the top of the building. What an amazing view. With the sunny day it was, it felt great. We then were on our way to the Childhood’s Museum, when someone jumped or fell under the train on the line we were taking. So we decided (well, I mostly followed without knowing what was going on) to go straight next to Mother’s London and stopped at Box park. Such a lovely place/quarter. So after a short break and having found everyone, we entered Mother’s London and started looking everywhere. It’s always inspiring to spoke/look at bests creatives work and mindset. But after some time the place was too crowded, and it started to be hard to hear each other.

And finally, today. We started with some insight on branding before going into some craft. And, as much as I liked to do it, my painting skill is kinda limited for now. My mug experience was … different. I struggled painting it black, so its final design is throughout my trials to paint it. The end mug is a bit unconventional, but at least it has a story. Same goes for the T-shirt for Leanne. I wasn’t able to make it look great on the painting part cause of the size of the brush or my drawing skills or both.

So I will probably start to draw again this weekend, it sounds like something that could be useful.