Creative Break Time

I am currently working as the researcher/evaluator for Creative Break Time, an active research project led by three Southend arts organisations: Metal, Focal Point Gallery and The Other MA (TOMA). Working alongside two primaries and two secondaries, the project resources schools to offer a small cohort of teachers access to creative break time for multiple days within the teaching term. Teachers are each paired with a freelance artist, and together with representatives from each of the arts organisations and independent facilitators, practitioners are supported to assemble for a series of co-authored residentials in places in and around Southend. 

Against a backdrop of widespread teacher burnout, reduced capacity for creative teaching and increased isolation of schools from their cultural ecosystems, this project sets out to provide a radical space for teacher-centred wellbeing and alternative peer learning. Foregrounding care, slow working and deep hanging out, Creative Break Time tests whether this model of being and doing together can make a difference to participating teachers, the curriculum and the wider teaching workforce.

We recently presented some findings from Year 1 at the iJADE 2025 conference, in a collaborative paper titled: Creative Break Time: Fostering habitats of radical, pedagogical rest.