Brooklyn Brainery: Get into things

November 17, 2009 9:01 AM

Brooklyn Brainery: Get into things
We were tired of paying hundreds of dollars to take classes in things we could learn ourselves and sitting through surface-skimming lectures, so we created Brooklyn Brainery. Cheap, collaborative classes where you work through a subject without some Dr. Bossy teacher - just some books, Wikipedia, everyone else's experience, and maybe an ice cream maker. We cover everything from your grandmother's favorite crafts to pure snobbish intellectualism. Think book club on steroids!

The idea is that instead of spending megabucks for someone to teach you something, you take a group of people who want to learn and give them the opportunity to make something of it. We have instructors, sure, but they mainly serve to guide the flow of class and make sure everyone keeps on task. They've done research ahead of time so they have a basic idea of where things can go, but the real strength of the class lies in its participants.

Read our first blog post for more background info! Classes start in January, check out the still-more-being-added course listing.

Birthed with help from the midwife known as Ask Metafilter.

posted by soma lkzx (9 comments total)

Heh. After last year's question yielded few leads, I think I might have found my solution, if BB can swing it book-and-film-club style. Now I need to come up with a theme for a class.

Full disclosure: as soma.lkzx's friend and current roommate, I've been within earshot of these plans, but am not affiliated with Brooklyn Brainery, except for being hella excited about it.
posted by zoomorphic at 10:17 AM on November 17, 2009 [1 favorite]

Wow soma, this is a really cool idea. Cheap high level education for the masses!
posted by scrutiny at 10:45 AM on November 17, 2009

And I thought I was all alone. Count me in.
posted by etc. at 2:17 PM on November 18, 2009

This is really cool! Apologies if I'm missing something, but is there a way I can sign up to receive notifications when you add a class, etc.?
posted by lalex at 8:17 PM on November 18, 2009

never mind, I found it, sorry!
posted by lalex at 8:21 PM on November 18, 2009

In Bushwick, ready to form a fifth column against gouge 'continuing adult education' classes.

Let's do this.
posted by godisdad at 10:17 PM on November 18, 2009

lalex: yeah, with adding new classes and opening registration and all of that i tried to work a bunch of "SIGN UP FOR OUR EMAIL LIST" notices everywhere, but it's oddly difficult to do that without sounding like a huckster.

less invasive update-getting methods are following us on twitter (@bkbrains) or subscribing to the RSS feed of the blog.

godisdad: sic semper tyrannis!
posted by soma lkzx at 4:44 AM on November 19, 2009

hey hey registration is open! if you'd like to sign up for a class, you're now 100% able to.
posted by soma lkzx at 5:43 PM on December 9, 2009

This is an amazing idea whose time has come. LOVE IT.
posted by MesoFilter at 1:26 PM on January 28, 2010