The pathway · SL 101 → SL 302
Learn it. Express it. Make something with it.
Most sign language courses end where a learner has vocabulary and nothing to do with it. This one keeps going, and finishes with your own work published, with your name on it.
Enroll in SL 101 — starts 12 October
Learn — the language itself.
You leave able to hold a real conversation. The longest stage on purpose, because this is the foundation everything after it stands on. Both workshops run online or in the studio.
SL 101
Sign Language Basics
No previous knowledge. Ends in a real conversation with a Deaf guest, filmed.
Session by session
- How a sign is built — handshape, movement, place
- Fingerspelling, and your name sign
- Greetings, who you are, where you are from
- Numbers, age, money, phone
- The five question forms and the face that carries them
- Family and the people around you
- Home, objects, daily things
- Food, drink, ordering
- Want, need, don't understand — making yourself understood
- First conversation with a Deaf guest, filmed
SL 102
Everyday Conversation
From knowing signs to holding an exchange. Includes one session outside the room, in Beirut.
Session by session
- Warm-up and repair — what to do when you miss it
- Work, study, where you live
- Time on the body — past, now, later
- Appointments and making plans
- Health, the body, the doctor
- Likes, opinions, agreeing and disagreeing
- Out in Beirut — café, taxi, shop, in sign
- Twenty minutes unscripted, filmed
Express — what the language does that Arabic cannot.
Face, space, body, narrative. This stage is the studio's own territory, taught by someone who directs visually for a living. Studio only — it does not work on a screen.
SL 201
Visual Expression
Face, space and classifiers. The part of LSL that has no equivalent in a spoken language.
Session by session
- The face is grammar, not emotion
- Intensity, size, degree — how much you mean it
- Space — putting people and places around you
- Classifiers — shape, holding, movement
- Role shift — becoming someone else
- Describe a scene nobody has seen, filmed
SL 202
Storytelling
Visual vernacular and narrative — the artistic form Deaf performers built. Produces the best work you will make all year.
Session by session
- What makes a story work in a visual language
- Structure — sequence, turn, ending
- Pace, pause and rhythm
- Constructed action — two people, one body
- Visual vernacular, the form Deaf artists built
- Each person tells one story on camera
Create — from learner to maker.
Ends with published work and a credit. Nobody else in Lebanon runs this stage, and it is where the school stops being a school. Deaf and hearing participants work together, and the Deaf collaborators are paid.
SL 301
Presentation
Signing to a room and to a camera. Short, intense, and the one professionals buy on its own.
Session by session
- Signing to a room, not to a person
- Clarity at distance and on camera
- Structuring an explanation
- Register — formal, casual, professional
- Eight minutes each, filmed and reviewed
SL 302
Collaborative Content Creation
Deaf and hearing participants make a real piece together and publish it. Feeds IN SIGN and the Creator Lab.
Session by session
- What the Deaf audience actually needs — the brief
- Choosing a subject and researching it
- Turning a written idea into signed concepts
- The words that don't exist yet — agreeing new signs
- Scripting and storyboarding for sign
- Shoot day one
- Shoot day two and edit review
- Published, with credits
What lives in the LMS
Self-paced, unlimited replay, yours for good.
- Vocabulary clips by theme — slowable, searchable, added to at every stage
- The basic concepts: handshape, movement, location, orientation, and the face
- One pre-work video per session, 8 to 12 minutes
- Receptive drills — watch a Deaf signer, answer, check yourself
- The running glossary, including new signs the community agrees along the way
What happens in the room
Ninety minutes, hands up from the first minute.
- Correction — the one thing a video cannot do
- Receptive speed against real people, not a recording
- Deaf guests, so the language is never only one person's hands
- Culture and etiquette, which are learned by being present
- Filming — every workshop ends on camera
The pathway
Six workshops, three stages. Take one, or take all of them.
SL 101 — Sign Language Basics
Beirut · venue updated soonHow it works
In the app
- Vocabulary clips by theme, slowable
- One pre-work video per session
- Receptive drills, checked yourself
- The running glossary, yours to keep
In the room
- Ninety minutes, hands up from the first
- Correction — what a video cannot do
- Deaf guests, not only one person's hands
- Every workshop ends on camera
$150 is the founding cohort price. This first group only — $180 after. Second seat $120.
Applying moves the date. The 2027 workshops are scheduled around who has applied.