House Wren

Video Arts is a UK-based video production company which produces and sells soft-skills training programmes, e-learning courses and learning platforms. Video Arts also distributes third party titles. It was founded in 1972 by John Cleese, Sir Antony Jay and a group of other television professionals.

Cleese sold the company in the 1990s,^[1] and it was later bought by Tinopolis in 2007.^[2] Cleese continued to feature in Video Arts' training videos.

Video Arts uses humour in its videos in order to make learning points more memorable. Its slogan is a quote from John Cleese: “People learn nothing when they’re asleep, and very little when they’re bored".^[3]

Video Arts' productions include;

• Meetings, Bloody Meetings (John Cleese, Will Smith)
• Can You Spare a Moment (John Cleese, Ricky Gervais)
• The Balance Sheet Barrier (John Cleese, Ronnie Corbett, later version with Dawn French)
• Jamie's School Dinners: Managing Change (Jamie Oliver)
• Pass It On (Rob Brydon, Will Smith)
• The Ultimate Stress Show (Olivia Colman)
• Performance Review: Every Appraisee's Dream (Hugh Laurie)
• The Art of Selling (Sheridan Smith)
• Behavioural Interviewing (James Nesbitt, Rebecca Front, Kris Marshall)
• Assert Yourself (Kris Marshall, Mark Heap)
• Performance Review: Code Red (Sharon Horgan, Jim Howick, David Schaal),
• Successful Selling (Kevin Bishop, James Lance, Simon Greenall)
• Sell It To Me (Robert Lindsay)
• 30 Ways to Make More Time (James Nesbitt)
• Presentation is Everything (Mathew Horne)
• The Unorganized Manager (John Cleese, James Bolam)

As well as corporate training videos, the company produced the comedy series, Fairly Secret Army, for Channel 4.

References

External links

• Patrick Russell: Shooting the message #20: Video Arts. The inside scoop on communications film legend Video Arts, founded by Anthony Jay and John Cleese 40 years ago at British Film Institute website, 20 July 2015