the idler academy
London,
Idler is a company devoted to helping people to lead more fulfilled lives. We
publish a bi-monthly magazine, produce online courses and run live events. We
want you to slow down, have fun and live well! Read a sample issue of the
magazine online by clicking here. Our story Back in 1991, bored to tears by his
job, 23 year old journalist Tom Hodgkinson lay on his bed and dreamed of
starting a magazine called The Idler. He’d found the title in a collection of
essays by Dr Johnson, himself a constitutionally indolent man. How to live, that
was the question. How to be free in a world of jobs and debt? And curse this
alarm clock. Tom was fortunately sacked from his job and started to sign on. He
wandered across the road to where his old friend, designer and writer Gavin
Pretor-Pinney lived. Gavin was the kind of person who could help Tom to realise
this dream. And he did. In August 1993, the pair produced issue one of the
Idler. It had the sub-title “literature for loafers”. Dr Johnson was the cover
star and there was an interview with magic mushroom guru Terence McKenna.
Contributors included a young journalist called Louis Theroux (pictured above at
the Idler Festival, 2019). The magazine has since enjoyed a number of
incarnations. In the nineties it was published by the Guardian newspaper, then
by Ebury publishing. Tom published the Idler as an annual collection of essays
until 2014, then relaunched the mag in 2016. Victoria Hull and Tom Hodgkinson
Victoria Hull and Tom Hodgkinson The Idler Academy The Idler Academy, founded at
a festival in 2010, is the Idler’s educational offshoot. It is a school which
offers online courses in the classical liberal arts and practical skills. From
March 2011 to December 2015 we ran a small bookshop, café and event venue in
Notting Hill. The Idler Academy teaches philosophy, calligraphy, music, business
skills, English grammar, ukulele, public speaking, singing, dancing, drawing,
self-defence and other subjects. Here you can educate yourself in the ideas of
Plato or learn the ukulele, either online or at an event or retreat. A dancing
lesson with the Mudflappers at Festival No 6 The Idler Academy was born at a
festival. Founders Tom and his partner Victoria Hull had always been
festival-goers, and in 2008 they were invited by the founders of the Secret
Garden Party to run a series of literary talks. They were given a yurt and built
a medieval garden in the shade of a lime tree. They put on talks from Crass’s
Penny Rimbaud, QI’s John Mitchinson, poet Clare Pollard and radical economist
Andrew Simms. In 2009 Tom and Victoria took the Idler Academy to the Port Eliot
Festival in Cornwall. They have also appeared at Wilderness, Shambala, Byline
and the Good Life Experience. In 2018 they launched the Idler Festival in
Hampstead, London. Photo credit: Monika S. Jakubowska Idler fans can now
subscribe to the Idler Academy online course programme. There are over 60
courses with new courses are added each year. In 2019 the team launched the
Idler Audio Channel with podcasts from Stewart Lee and more. Team Idler
