Based on overwhelming demand, the One Club’s recently launched ONE School, a free New York-based portfolio program for young Black creatives is expanding to the West Coast.

This program will be led by Ez Blaine, current executive creative director at ChowNow LA. He previously held creative positions at Apple, R/GA, AKQA, TBWA\Chiat Day and Wieden+Kennedy London. His curricula will be coordinated with East Coast lead Oriel Davis-Lyons, creative director, Spotify, and Bob Isherwood, former Saatchi & Saatchi worldwide creative director and Vanderbilt University adjunct professor, now in charge of the club’s Professional Development department, to organize and administer the program.  

The group is keeping the core structure the same as the NY-based initiative to move beyond simply teaching students how to put together a portfolio and also provide guidance on navigating the industry as a Black creative. 

The online school will run two nights a week for 16 weeks, with students getting 10 briefs over the course of the program covering subjects such as out-of-home, innovation and data-driven storytelling.

“Creative talent on the West Coast is inherently multi-hyphenated: They might be gamer-DJs or musician-writers,” states Blaine. “They’ve tried and done a lot, so I expect the ideas and work developed by students here will be bursting with incredible creative collisions.”

In addition, two dozen leading agencies and brands are now on board as sponsors. In addition to founder partner Spotify, Adobe has signed on as creativity partner, with BBDO, The Coca-Cola Company, COLLINS, DAVID, DDB, Dentsu Aegis, Droga5, Deutsch, Facebook, FCB, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Google, Google Creative Lab, GUT, Leo Burnett Group, The Martin Agency, McCann Worldgroup, McKinney, Publicis, JOAN, Ogilvy, Restaurant Brands International, R/GA, S4 Capital, Squarespace and WPP also on board to underwrite ONE School.

Since its launch on July 20, ONE School has quickly quadrupled the annual number of students it will accommodate with a total of 60 seats now available, 15 each for fall and spring sessions across both coasts.  

https://www.oneschoolny.org/apply