The School of Life Shop

Events at The School of Life Shop

• A Trip To The Future With Ben Hammersley at The School of Life

  Course

  25 Feb 2012

  World-leading futurist Ben Hammersley will be our guide on this day-long trip to the future. We will be based - of course - in and around TechCity, the UK's answer to Silicon Valley. However this day won't just be focused on the latest trend, technology or gadget. Our hope, by peering behind the laboratory doors of London's East End creative quarter, will be to get to the heart of the future those currently building it would actually like to see happen. During the day we'll visit studios and micro-factories, and meet the people who are creating the world the rest of us will come to know. We’ll investigate yesterday’s visions of tomorrow to ask whether our cities are shaped more by nostalgia than future-vision. We’ll visit shops and markets to discover how our changing understanding of complexity and communication is opening up new possibilities for commerce and social change. And we'll peer into a number of different possible futures in order to clarify our own future priorities.

• Generating Creativity With Michael Atavar at The School of Life

  Course

  26 Mar 2012

  A workshop exploring techniques for shifting the blocks that stop effective working.

• How To Balance Work With Life at The School of Life

  Course

  16 Feb 2012

  It’s hard enough to find time for lunch - let alone make time to see our partners and families, go to the gym, hang out with friends or enjoy our hobbies. So what gets in the way of re-designing our lives? Must work be an albatross around our necks? Or can we find time for a finer marriage not only with work but with time itself? This course examines the current landscape of work but also the art of play, promising relief from the pressures of the Protestant work ethic and our relentless drive to succeed. We’ll look at how difficulties in our working life can point us towards better futures, probe what lies behind our assumptions about leisure, and practice reversing our thinking about our free time, making it 'time on' rather than 'time off'. We’ll ask where out identities are located, what cultural myths may be imprisoning us, and how we can be passionately engaged in the areas which really matter to us. Above all, we’ll explore how we can enjoy rich relationships not just with work but with our own self and loved ones, and how we might draw these relationships into a more harmonious partnership of equals.

• How To Be A Better Friend at The School of Life

  Course

  27 Feb 2012

  Lovers may come and go, work may carry us half way around the globe, but friendship tends to be a point of stability in an otherwise changing world. In this class we’ll be exploring the insights and advice of a number of key thinkers to look at the limits and perils of friendship, as well as its promise. Can men and women really be just good friends? What is the nature of the friendships we forge at work, and why do they tend not to last? Should we feel guilty about that long-lost friend we’ve been meaning to email? Aristotle warned: ‘The desire for friendship comes quickly. Friendship does not.’ Bring your childhood companion, unlikely ally, a chance acquaintance or useful contact and come along to a fascinating and useful evening about a matter that is close to us all.