Len’s Club is ready for founding members to join. OMG. Finally. I have been working on this for over six months and thinking about how to do it for years.

You can become a Founding Member now.

A Founding Member gets a guaranteed lifetime rate of AUD$50 per quarter if they subscribe continuously. By becoming a Founding Member you are kick-starting this project. You are investing in something that will have small beginnings that will grow and grow. After the 9th April the fees will increase to their normal rates of AUD$90 per quarter, and the Founding Member offer will end. Founding Members will get a very good deal.

“What is Len’s Club Len?”

I am so glad you asked. Basically it is an online learning community. One where learning content arrives regularly and consistently that we can talk it about together. Where we inspire each other to grow and develop our photography. We share thoughts and photographs. We talk. We watch, listen and read. We grow.

It’s like growing a flower from seed.

First we tend to the soil to make sure its fertile and ready. Are you ready to learn more about yourself and your work? I have been preparing the soil to make myself ready for this project. Learning to talk to a video camera is one. Another is figuring out how to best teach via distance another. This is why I started the Weekly Photography Exercises, so I could gain practical experience in teaching through remote exercises. I studied distance education and e-learning years ago, but I couldn’t figure our the practical how. Well, after years of thought, now I have. It will be in my way. Len’s way. And I am so excited.

Secondly, we plant the seed. This is often the information about ideas, working methods, ways of thinking. Presentations on how composition works, and visual language. On how artists work. On how visual art works. On developing ongoing projects. Creating books. Things to read. Photographs and photographers to look at.

Thirdly we have to provide nutrients, sunshine and water to our seedling as it grows. Here we need to offer a positive, supportive and encouraging learning environment so each member grows. Develops. Here the helpful hand of an experienced and lifelong professional facilitator really comes into its own. That is a space I have been holding for people for my whole adult life. A nurturing learning space. One where you are encouraged to experiment, take risks and grow. One where you feel honored, welcomed and supported. This is just one of the main reasons that so many of my students return time after time to learn fin my classroom.

Fourthly, blooming. We need an environment that supports you to blossom and be fruitful. When you flower we want to be there to be awed and inspired. To shower you in appreciation for the beauty you have bought to our lives. This is the time for harvest. What beautiful things might be created when you have been in such a special environment. Perhaps it is your first print, or even a book. Perhaps it’s an exhibition? Or it may be as simple as your first photograph that you are proud of creating.

Lastly, we want to nurture a whole forest of different flowers. Now we are talking about a whole ecosystem that supports each other. We want an environment that allows us as a community to celebrate each others successes. We all need to take time to feel part of a bigger community or creative artists and photographers. Community keeps us going. It is such a special thing to be part of a creative supportive community. For me, this is what I ache for most.

In practical terms, Len’s Club starts very similarly to my classroom. I am creating presentations about the things I usually teach in my photography Masterclass, and all the other specialty workshops I run. I will teach you, like I have been doing for my whole life, in a facilitated learning journey. It will be a conversation between us all, and not just a one way presentation.

I will be introducing you to photographers work that will hopefully inspire you. I will be doing book reviews and showing you how I work. I will run live webinars where I will help you with your work.

Len’s Club has a private community forum for sharing photographs, critiquing, asking questions and helping each other. This will be our central hub for communication.

Len’s Club will now house my weekly photography exercises, which will be supplemented by random challenges to entertain those of us who have more time to devote to photography, those that sometimes want more doing than thinking.

All of my articles from all the magazines I write for throughout the world will be eventually be available for you to read in their original form.

Lastly, we aim to fund professionally produced and filmed documentaries about photographers, their processes, creativity and their projects. Here, in the long run, we are aiming at a Netflix for creatives. Ben Coope, from Leap Films has been creating award winning documentaries about photographers. He filmed and produced ‘Lens’ which can be seen at my website. He will be producing the finished advertising material for Len’s Club, and will soon have our first documentary under way.

When you join as a founding member, you are helping start something special. For the first person that joins today, there won’t be that flourishing community that I talk about, or all of those videos that overwhelm. For you will be the first, and it will take time for it to develop. But we are ready to start. During the period that the Founding Membership is available, we will be working very hard getting it off the ground. Once we have a few onboard, we will start releasing the new content, steadily.

Please note that on today’s rates AUD$50 per three months is only USD$28.48, GBP24.81, and EUR26.

i do hope you will consider joining, and help us create something special.

I also hope that I have found a new way to teach and encourage creativity that is more accessible.

https://www.lensschool.com/subscribe

Lastly, we can’t take bookings for the Valda Bailey, Doug Chinnery & Len Metcalf Abstract Photography Workshop Series, but we can tell you what we are planning and take your expressions of interest. We have been working on this for months too.

https://www.lensschool.com/valda-bailey-doug-chinnery-metcalf-abstract-photography-workshops

Lake Peder, South West Tasmania. Photograph and text copyright © Len Metcalf 2020