Artist Sabbaticals 🏺
Is 2025 your year to take one?
Hello new subscribers - we’re so happy you’re here!
Welcome to the Artist’s Toolbox - we share practical tools that can help boost your creativity, inspired by The Artist’s Way. You can come along to our free creative sessions run once a month: join our next creative session: Drawing the Wild Beauty of Bolivia: Llamas, Flamingos and Mountains. Tuesday 3rd June, 7pm UK time/11am Californian time. Open to all subscribers!
Without further ado, I’m Leah, and I wanted to introduce myself a little - I’m one of the two creatives behind The Artist’s Toolbox! I thought I’d share a little bit about my last year in particular as it’s been my most creative year to date and the year during which I took an Artist Sabbatical.
In 2022 I got my hands on a copy of The Artist’s Way book by Julia Cameron - a gift from a friend. I tentatively started using one of the basic tools, the ‘morning pages’, on days when I felt I most needed to, but it wasn’t until 2024 that I followed the 12-week, 12-chapter programme. I knew the only way I’d see it through was doing it with others for the accountability-factor, so I reached out to a few friends to start an Artist’s Way group. The timing wasn’t great (it never is!) - I’d just started a stressful role, but these hourly meet-ups on Sunday evenings in the dead of winter became my lifeline. They evolved into a space I’d never experienced before: a delightfully cosy meet-up co-created when a catch up with friends, a safe space, and a place where creativity is welcomed, collide.
The Artist’s Way helped me commit to taking some time out to develop my creative practice at La Casa del Ceramista.
But I still remember our first Artist’s Way session where we covered The Artist’s Way’s/Julia Cameron’s ‘Basic Principles’, and read phrases such as “it is safe to open ourselves to greater and great creativity”, and “Our dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity.”
Being Brits, I still remember the awkwardness in the (online) room as we all made an effort to speak the syrupy words aloud. But roundabout here Julia Cameron interjects and makes a wise and necessary disclaimer for those of us cringing over our computers:
“When we first start working with affirmations, they may feel dumb. Hokey. Embarrassing. Isn’t this interesting? We can easily, and without embarrassment, bludgeon ourselves with negative affirmations, but saying nice things about ourselves is notoriously hard to do.”
But it was the seemingly sugary words and activities that - fast-forward a year - find me writing, practising ceramics, developing my own ventures, and living more creatively than ever before.
“At first, we may want faith to take the first dance class, the first step toward learning a new medium. Later, we may want the faith and the funds for further classes, seminars, a larger work space, a year’s sabbatical.”
This last part is where I’m at: my sabbatical. Through a series of serendipitous events I’ve ended up at the beautiful Hacienda Telares in Sacaba, rural Cochabamba, Bolivia.
Telares means weavings. Hacienda Telares started as a hub for Bolivian women to share their handicraft skills in order to preserve indigenous knowledge while sustaining their livelihoods. Today, the event location and lodging 'weave' the stories and experiences of the locals with those of visitors, through the cultural exchange programmes and artist residencies they run.
As a city-dweller, this is my first time living in the countryside. I’ve been amazed at how much the country calm and quiet increases my mental bandwidth, helping me think more expansively and creatively.
Hacienda Telares has proved to be the perfect place for reflection, contemplation, and creativity. But step outside of Sacaba and Bolivia offers all the colours, stimulus, and vibrancy a creative needs. The city is home to the biggest market in South America, where you can find sources of inspiration in every direction you look.
Life in Bolivia:
A good chunk of my time this year has been spent at La Casa del Ceramista (The Ceramicist’s House), also in Cochabamba, hand-building and throwing on the wheel as well as assisting in running introductory workshops. La Casa del Ceramista is the studio-warehouse of a family of Bolivian ceramicists, who have been based there for the last 30 years. Their large studio-warehouse is a potter’s paradise: it’s like a ceramicist’s version of ‘The Room of Requirement’. The family work in the production of crockery for independent businesses and franchises, as well as glaze importation and mixing, and run classes and artisan fairs as well as making their own art. They mould, throw and hand-build.
Meet my ceramics teacher, Mo:
The Artist’s Toolbox, our little corner on Substack, is a space to share tools that can give your creativity a boost. Our hope is to leave you feeling inspired, motivated and/or more creative after visiting us on Substack or joining our live sessions.
So to wrap up, these are the tools that most helped me during my Artist Sabbatical:
Accountability groups (we hope to run some of these soon so watch this space!)
Artist interview channels like Louisiana channel
Have you ever thought about taking an Artist Sabbatical, whether seriously or in your fantasy life?!
I’ll leave you with the invitation to write about your Artist Sabbatical in your morning pages - here are some prompts:
If it could be anywhere, where would your sabbatical it be?
Do you know of any interesting locations you may be able to stay for this purpose?
If you had to pick just one creative project to work on during your sabbatical, what would it be?
Hope to meet you live sometime during one of our creative sessions! Join our next creative session: Drawing the Wild Beauty of Bolivia: Llamas, Flamingos and Mountains. Tuesday 3rd June, 7pm UK time/11am Californian time. Open to all subscribers!