School of Communication Arts Doubles Down on AI: Teaching the Next Generation to Think in Stereo

The School of Communication Arts (SCA), renowned for shaping the future stars of advertising, has announced a bold new direction in creative education: training students to work not in traditional copywriter/art director teams, but in solo partnership with AI.

Dubbed the “Creative Hybrid” model, the approach acknowledges a fast-changing industry where generative tools are everywhere—but taste, emotional intelligence, and mess-finding still set great creatives apart.

“AI is excellent at tidying, organising, and polishing,” said Marc Lewis, Dean of SCA. “But it doesn’t spot the weird stuff. It doesn’t feel unease. It doesn’t challenge a brief with awkward questions. That’s the human bit. And that’s what we’re doubling down on.”

From day one, SCA’s new intake is taught to collaborate with AI as their creative partner—developing insights, generating routes, testing executions—then stress-testing those ideas through real human intuition and feedback.

The move is already paying off. Early work from the current cohort has impressed agency partners, and a short film explaining the shift—“AI + AI” (Artistic Intelligence + Artificial Intelligence)—has gained traction across the industry.

🎙️ A Message from Marc Lewis

“The industry is at a fork in the road. One path leads to faster, cheaper, flatter. The other asks deeper questions. Our job is to send people down the second path—with curiosity, guts, and the ability to use every tool available to them.

At SCA, we’re not training students to compete with machines. We’re training them to be the bit AI can’t be. That’s where the magic lives. That’s where the future of creativity begins.”

🚀 What This Means for the Industry

SCA’s shift reflects a growing realisation that traditional structures may not be best suited to the world creative students are entering. As budgets tighten and timelines shorten, agencies are under pressure to do more with less. By developing talent who are fluent in both human and machine capabilities, SCA is helping the industry evolve—without losing the magic.