Creative learning, powered by experts. Clear Water was a project co-founded by myself and fellow creative and entrepreneur, Benji Reeves.
In 2020 Benji and I saw an opportunity. The rise in e-learning tools, alongside a growing dissatisfaction toward traditional education for creatives presented the need for a new creative learning ecosystem.
Our concept was to build a simple platform where creatives could connect with experts, book mentoring sessions and buy online courses. I designed the first iteration of our platform that would enable this.
To test our idea, we onboarded 10 world-class creatives as experts, holding a unique position in the industry to guide creatives early in their careers.
We designed a tiered learning system to ensure our offering was as accessible as possible. This offered one-off doses of creative inspiration, four-week courses and one-to-one mentoring for dedicated learning.
We partnered with Conor Clinch, an esteemed photographer with clients including Gucci, Christian Louboutin, Brioni and Fiorucci. And Nicole Chui, an embroidery artist with clients including Adidas, TikTok and WeTransfer. We helped them both build and launch their 4-week course.
In this new world, creatives of all kinds could thrive, powered by our vetted industry experts. In 6 months we designed our brand, built our platform, launched 2 educational courses and onboarded 10+ world-class experts across Fashion, Film, Business, Art, and Photograph. Their experience spanned Gucci, Adidas, TikTok, WeTransfer, Google, Thom Browne, Sky, ITV, Nike, and more.
In January of 2021 we were featured by It's Nice That in their industry change maker series "A New Angle". you can read the full interview.
After the pandemic closed universities and threw the future of creative education into question, the duo – Read, a creative entrepreneur and Reeves, a writer, producer and creative – saw an opportunity to shake up a traditional sector in stasis. The platform hopes to make creative learning more accessible, affordable and adaptable to today’s industry.
Benji and I began seeking funding to take this concept to the next level. We were very close to signing a deal but decided instead to pursue our existing commitments as Benji was building Cortex and I was learning rapidly at Contact. It didn't feel like the right timing to take this to the next level, but we learnt so much building it and my conviction in our idea and execution remains!