Creative Lab

PHLOEM Junior Creative Lab · Ages 11 to 18
A cast brass seedling breaking upward through the keys of a blank keyboard

AI and computer skills in Abu Dhabi, for ages 11 to 18.

Word, Excel, presentations, AI tools and video editing. No coding.

.docx· .xlsx· .pptx· · .mp4
01

What your child actually learns

Five things are taught here. Four of them end in a file you can open. The fifth changes how the other four get made.

  • .docx

    Microsoft Word

    Not typing — structure. Headings that mean something, a contents page that builds itself, numbering that survives an edit, and references that still hold together when the document is forty pages instead of four. Most students meet this properly for the first time at university, which is about six years too late.

  • .xlsx

    Microsoft Excel

    A sheet that calculates, rather than a table that merely looks like one. Formulas, sorting and filtering, lookups, and a chart that says the thing the numbers are actually saying. It is the single skill most often asked for in a first job and least often taught before one.

  • .pptx

    PowerPoint, and standing up with it

    A presentation that survives being presented. Fewer words on the slide, a shape to the argument, and then the part everybody skips: saying it out loud, to a room, at the right speed. Half of this section is design and half of it is nerve.

  • AI tools

    Not a fifth subject. It changes the other four. A student learns to brief a model properly, judge what comes back, and keep only the part that is theirs — used on their own work, never instead of it. A teenager who cannot yet tell a good answer from a confident one is not helped by faster answers, so that judgement is the thing being taught.

    A small solid brass six-point spark resting on a page of handwritten working notes covered in arrows and crossings-out
    The working stays theirs. The tool is pointed at it.
  • .mp4

    Video editing

    Cut, sequence, sound, export. Choosing the order of things is the whole craft, and it is the same skill as paragraphing an essay, learned somewhere students are willing to do it forty times. This is editing rather than camera work — what happens after the footage exists.

    A hand-drawn storyboard of six pencil frames on manila paper, planning the order of cuts before a video is edited
    Nothing is cut until it has been drawn in six boxes.

Do you teach coding?
No.

No Python, no Scratch, no robotics, no game engines. Almost every course in Abu Dhabi with AI in its name is teaching a programming language underneath, and if that is what you are looking for we would rather say so now than take the enrolment.

What is taught here instead is the set of tools a student opens in every subject they take, in every application they ever fill in, and in the first job they get — together with the judgement to point AI at their own work without handing it over.

It is a narrower promise than the market makes, and it is one we can keep.

Close view of a brass stem pushing up between broken keyboard keys, lit warm against a dark green ground
Something grows out of the keyboard. It is not another programmer.
02

Ages 11 to 18

One room, one age range, and no talking down. A course that treats a fifteen-year-old like a child loses them inside the first hour, so the work here is real work: a document that will be marked, a sheet that has to balance, a video somebody will actually sit through.

Younger students take longer over the same brief and finish it. Older ones take it further — a longer report, a harder sheet, a cut with sound on it. The brief does not get easier; the time spent on it does.

This is the one programme at PHLOEM that is not about a syllabus. If what your child needs is the syllabus itself, that is the full-day CBSE programme, and for a single subject that has come loose there is one to one tuition and the group of five.

03

Three days a week, two hours a session

Two hours is long enough to actually make something and short enough to stay sharp all the way through. Three days a week is what it takes for the habit to survive the gap between sessions — one afternoon a week is a hobby, and it shows in what comes out at the end.

The Lab runs at all three centres — Hamdan Street, Madinat Zayed and Mussaffah — and transport is available. Everyone starts with a free trial class, which is a working session rather than a meeting: your child sits down, makes something, and you both decide afterwards.

Two hours, three times a week, and something to show for it.

04

What they leave with

Not a certificate. A folder of things that open, made by your child, that can be put in front of somebody.

Finished student work laid out on a dark green table: a bound report, a printed spreadsheet, a slide of charts and a hand-drawn storyboard strip
.docx

A document

Properly structured, correctly referenced, and long enough that the structure had to do some work.

.xlsx

A working sheet

One that calculates on its own, with a chart that is the right chart for the question.

.pptx

A deck, and the nerve

Slides worth showing, plus the practice of having stood up and delivered them out loud.

A way of working

Knowing what to ask an AI tool for, and knowing when the answer coming back is not good enough.

.mp4

A finished cut

Storyboarded, edited, scored and exported — a piece with a beginning and an end.

05

Where we teach

The Lab runs at all three centres in Abu Dhabi, and transport is available from each of them.

Hamdan Street

Room 303, 3rd Floor
Burj Al Arab Building
Near Yateem Opticals, Abu Dhabi
+971 50 422 0679

Madinat Zayed

Bin Hamila Building, 4th Floor
Near GEMACO Building, Zone 1
Abu Dhabi
+971 50 700 1397

Mussaffah

Shabiya 12
Mussaffah, Abu Dhabi
Office 07:30–18:00
+971 50 422 0679
06

Questions parents ask about the Lab

Does my child need their own laptop?

Ask us when you book the trial — it is the one detail that is worth two minutes on the phone rather than a guess on a web page, and we will tell you exactly what is provided at your centre. If your child already has a laptop they use for homework, bringing it is usually the better option anyway: the habits transfer more easily on the keyboard they will still be using at home afterwards.

Is this a course, or an activity?

A course. It runs to a plan, the work is judged on whether it is any good, and it finishes with files rather than a photograph of everyone smiling.

Parents usually find us while looking for after school activities in Abu Dhabi, and it will sit in that part of the week — but two hours, three times a week, producing work that gets marked is not a drop-in club.

Will my child have work to show at the end?

Yes, and it is rather the point. Every session ends with something saved, and by the end there is a document, a spreadsheet, a presentation and an edited video — all made by your child, all openable on any machine, all of it useful the next time a project is due.

My child wants to learn coding. Can you teach that?

No — and we would rather say it plainly than stretch the description until it covers something we do not do. We teach Word, Excel, PowerPoint, AI tools and video editing, with no programming of any kind.

If coding is genuinely what your child wants, one of the programming centres in Abu Dhabi is the right call and we will happily say so. If what they actually want is to be good with a computer, this is the closer fit.

Start with a free trial class

Tell us your child’s age. They sit in on a working session, make something, and you decide afterwards.

Or WhatsApp +971 50 422 0679

Madinat Zayed

Bin Hamila Building, 4th Floor
Near GEMACO Building, Zone 1
+971 50 700 1397

Hamdan Street

Room 303, 3rd Floor, Burj Al Arab Building
Near Yateem Opticals, Abu Dhabi
+971 50 422 0679

Mussaffah & contact

Shabiya 12, Mussaffah
Office 07:30–18:00
infophloemlearning@gmail.com
+971 50 422 0679
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