What's inside Sleight School Community?

If you've been thinking about joining Sleight School Community and wondering what you'd actually find inside, this is for you. Here's look around at the rooms, the content, and the people.

There's a lot in here. More than most people expect.

The Wonders Blog

This is where I post routines, essays, performances, opinions, and things I've been thinking about.

Some of it is instructional. You'll find full routines with video, explained and contextualized. Sleeve Aces, Collectors Kickback, Raising Kane Assembly, Darwin Ortiz's Jumping Gemini, Spooky Aces at a Distance. They come with the thinking behind them, credits to where they came from, and connections to related material elsewhere in the community.

Some of it is performance. There's a full show I performed on a cruise ship around Iceland, rough by my own admission, but real. There's footage from the 1997 Midnight Madness show featuring John Carney, Eric Mead, Tom Mullica, Harry Anderson, and René Lavand. That one's a piece of magic history.

Some of it is essay. There's a long post called "To Share or Not to Share" about originality, creativity, and what it means to find your own material. I write about the difference between building on the work of others and simply taking it. It sits with you after you read it.

Some of it is interview and conversation. There's a podcast with Alex McAleer where I talk through my spotty television career. There are posts like "Adding Impact to Your Magic," pulled from a talk he gave at Magi-Fest in 2014. It's not what you think.

What makes the Wonders posts something more than a content library is what happens underneath them. The comment sections are where the community shows up. When I posted "To Share or Not to Share," the responses came from Mac King, Chris Cox, Michael Weber, Rafael Benatar, and working performers from around the world, each adding their own experience to the conversation. The comments are insightful. They're part of the education.

Over fifty posts and growing. The Wonders blog alone is worth the membership.

The Tiny Teach-Ins

This is one of the most distinctive things about Sleight School. Members of the community, working pros, dedicated students, people who are serious about this art, volunteer to teach something. Anything. A sleight, a routine, a principle, a theory, a piece of gear. They go live, they teach it, and the recording lives in the Previous Tiny Teach-ins archive for everyone to watch anytime.

Here's what's in the archive right now:

Rope Magic Roundup with Joaquin Matas. A full roundup of rope work from one of the best hands in the game.

Inverse French Pop with Junu Choi. A clever move that Junu demonstrated for David and then agreed to teach to the community.

Gaffing Cards with Jason Silberman. How to make your own gaffed cards. Practical, detailed, immediately useful.

Rubber Band Variations with Elias D'Sastre. A new member who showed up and taught a set of rubber band routines that had people grabbing for their junk drawers.

Flying Eagle Utility Switch with Eagle Hsu. A clean utility move worth knowing.

Phantom Pivot with Antonio Bourgeois. A card technique with real applications.

Aces for Connoisseurs with Joaquin Matas. An ace routine built for people who know what they're looking at.

Destiny with Jim Turnpaugh. Jim's original routine with a deep dive into Tom Gagnon's Versatile Spread Control. Performance and full explanation both included.

Strolling Coins Across with Joaquin Matas. Coin work from a professional strolling performer.

Book Report: The Hermit Magazine with Stefan Decker. Not a trick, not a sleight. A serious review of a serious publication.

Strolling Theory with Joaquin Matas. Not a trick at all. A talk about material choice, pocket management, and the philosophy of working close. One of the most watched sessions in the archive.

A False Shuffle with Reed Nussbaum. In-the-hands false shuffles taught by someone who has been doing table magic since he was twelve years old.

Peek Wallets with Stefan Decker. A comprehensive look at peek wallets for mentalists, with a bonus ebook on the Cassidy wallet included as a gift to the community.

Triumph Surprise with Amory Hermetz. An original take on the Triumph plot.

Mini All Backs with Joaquin Matas. A compact, practical All Backs routine.

That's sixteen sessions. All recorded. All in the archive. All there for you to watch at 2 in the afternoon or midnight with headphones on.

The Tuesday Study Sessions

Every Tuesday, Sleight School hosts a live study session. Guests from the magic world come in to teach, demonstrate, discuss, and answer questions. The archive of previous sessions goes back hundreds of weeks. The archive of previous Tuesday Study Sessions is one of the deepest resources in the community.

The Courses

Sleight School has a Card Basics Boot Camp and a Coin Basics Boot Camp. These are structured, progressive courses designed to build real technique from the ground up. Rick Holcombe teaches the foundations of coin magic. I teach the basic "tool box" techniques of card magic, along with some guest experts: Joaquin Matas teaches the Multiple Retention Turnover, Antonio Bourgious teaches the spread cull, Andy Dean teaches the Charlie Miller Table Pass in the Card Boot Camp. The courses are built for people who are serious about developing a foundation.

Everything Else

There's a Library. A Screening Room. A Reviews space where members share thoughts on books, products, and publications. Eric Mead runs a Book Club. There's a Q&A space called the Brain Trust. Antonio has his own Lab space. Joaquin has his own table.

There's a Show and Tell space where members share their own work and get feedback. A Swap Meet. A Photo Gallery. A Magic News section. A space called Work in Progress where things get developed out in the open.

There's a Main Hall where conversation happens every day. A cafeteria-style group chat. Polls and Trivia. A Conventions space.

Hundreds of members across all of it.

The People

The community draws people from all over. What they share is that they take the craft seriously. You'll find working professionals, dedicated hobbyists, people who have been doing this for forty years and people who just started. The tone is warm and welcoming and the standard is high. That's a combination that's harder to find than it sounds.

 it's been a grand experiment, and this community has grown organically. Every member has ownership and has shaped what it is today. Basically, it's a very friendly place where magicians like to hang out and learn from each other. I hope you'll be one of them.  

Magic has a way of finding people. When it finds you, Sleight School is a friendly door to walk through. Come see what's inside.

Sleight School is an online community for magicians at every level. Browse free tutorials, connect with instructors, and start learning at sleightschool.com.