What is creativeLIVE ? In short, it is a worldwide, on-line classroom for free while live, and during re-broadcasts, for pretty much all things creative. Geared strongly towards photography, and digital filmmaking and design, they have recently expanded the platform to include incredible business and marketing courses for creatives.
Brought to the world as the brainchild of Craig Swanson in collaboration with photographer and filmmaker Chase Jarvis and a wonderful, diverse crew of creative innovators, creativeLIVE brings instructors both well-known and unknown (at first) from their studios in Seattle, WA. Part Oprah, and part inspirational bootcamp, with big doses of hands on teaching, a live hand-picked audience and on-line questions that keep the instructors on their toes and the teaching moving. With the in studio chat hosts Susan Rodderick and Kenna Klosterman fielding the online questions and engaging with the online community, this is hands down the best platform for creative learning!
I've been watching creativeLive from the beginning, when the format was young, and no one seemed to know what this thing would look like. Marketed solely on social media, the team has grown into a well oiled machine that is not "slick" the way so many other online course sources are. From photography basics to complex scenarios, filmmaking from award winning filmmakers, wedding, portrait, commercial and fashion photography, to how to maximize your finances and creative business techniques in the new economy. creativeLIVE is so positive and empowering a platform, it lets you in deep to the whole of the creative process, with personal stories of triumphs and failures that let you know where the instructors come from and how anyone can achieve a successful creative life.
So much material is given to the worldwide audience for free, usually for three full days at a stretch, that it can be overwhelming. Hence they let you purchase the courses (for a discount during broadcast) for amazing prices given the content. Allowing you to carry all the video info on your mobile phone, iPad, laptop, any time you want, there are often extra features that are only available when you purchase a course.
And the sheer passion of the instructors is unmatched anywhere else on the web. Even watching courses that I thought would never apply to my work has given me some nugget or two to transform or inspire my own business. The team at creativeLIVE are wonderfully approachable both on the site and through social media. It has been a real joy watching the growth of this platform, these creatives, and the people across the web whose lives have been transformed for the better for having participated.
As the platform grows, they have recently been going "on-the-road" to several places, such as the wonderful shows they produced in New York. The online sense of being a fly-on-the-wall in master classes on creativity is something we all need more of...
Viva creativeLIVE!