If you want to acquire a new talent during this lockdown, here are few popular websites to guide you

Sheetal

With lockdown after lockdown, the existential crisis has become real. And at the same time escaping from it has become the new job for all age groups. The best and the most productive one is acquiring a new skill or taking up a new hobby for which various online courses on popular websites like Masterclass, FrontRow, Udemy and Domestika are coming to the rescue.

Not just that, celebs and artistes too have turned mentors, sharing their expertise in music, painting, writing and what not to curate courses for interested students.

We take a look at few interesting courses that keep showing up on our Instagram feed, helping all those back-benchers back in school to take a FrontRow in these web classes to start a new chapter of their life.

Musical journey

India is full of bathroom singers and many have regrets of not taking up music as one of the majors in school. But when singers like Shaan and Neha Kakkar are giving notes on vocals, Amit Trivedi is teaching music composition, who wouldn’t want to take a chance? Posting the promo video of his course on Instagram and other handles, Amit writes, “My music composition course on @getfrontrow is the perfect stepping stone for your musical journey. Start learning today!” Neha Kakkar writes, “As you know, I joined @getfrontrow to put together my first exclusive singing course! Main chahti thi ki mere jaise jitne bhi aspiring singers hai, unse mei apne experiences, tips aur woh sab share kar pau jo maine seekha hai! (I wanted to share my experiences, tips and my learnings with all those aspiring singers like me). Sign up, and start learning! I hope this course helps all of you in your singing journey.” Just like FrontRow, Celebrity School has signed up Shaan to conduct a course in singing for their subscribers.

The right direction

Director Shashank Khaitan has collaborated with Unlu, another app with a tagline, ‘Learn from celebs’, and has planned a course in direction. He says, “Before becoming a director, I was a dance instructor. This course is for everyone who wishes to learn about filmmaking with no prior experience in the field. Also, I have felt we all have a certain perception about film industry as an outsider, the course will help break many misconceptions about the Mayanagri, and I have shared my personal experiences and mistakes from which others can learn.” About online courses suddenly becoming a new trend, he adds, “I believe it has changed the way we think. Due to Covid, online courses have boomed. I feel it has helped us to put our knowledge and experience to utmost use.”

Rap game

Rapper Divine has added another feather to his cap by becoming the first rapper to be teaching his craft. In the promo he says, “What I haven’t learnt from school, I learnt from the streets and roads, and now you learn it at FrontRow.” He has brought his entire Gully Gang on board for this course, with eight instructors and 25 lessons in total.

Writing your story

When Ruskin Bond shares his wisdom on Unlu platform, the budding writers woulld not have second thoughts. Available course on Unlu, it offers various other courses such as Johnny Lever’s comedy course, Monali Thakur’s singing course and Manoj Bajpayee’s acting course. There’s another course from popular stand-up comedian Biswa Kalyan Rath on FrontRow which is equally popular. Not just that, there’s a course to learn Pilates on a website and one in which Sania Mirza teaches the basics of tennis.

A note from the course creators

“Our mission is to get passionate people a front row access to get inspired by their favourite mentors, learn from them and become the best. We collaborated with celebrities who believe in the same goal with bite-sized video lessons, guided exercises, active community & more. Since its launch in December 2020, FrontRow has seen amazing traction. We currently have hundreds of thousands of users across with music & comedy being the most popular categories, with learners participating actively in our community driven competitions,” says Ishaan Preet Singh, co-founder FrontRow.

Education Influencer Varun Mayya is a founder and CEO of Avalon Meta, an online learning community that primarily works in the domains of finance, code, game design, marketing, sales, design and others. He says, “We teach the same concepts that our community is primarily composed of. We knew that traditional university was broken, and that’s what we set out to fix. What really stood out was our community and the kind of friendships people made. People think of this space as purely courses, but we knew it was about belonging, alumni and community. That was our contrarian view on the industry.”

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