This retreat brings authors into conversation with painters, sculptors, weavers, musicians, landscape designers, and other creative practitioners. Through interviews, observation, and collaborative workshops, participants will learn how artists think, work, fail, obsess, and create.

The goal is both to celebrate artistic practice and to help writers portray creative lives with greater depth, specificity, and authenticity.

Alongside the writing programme, each participant will spend time at the loom, learning from an experienced weaver and gradually making a scarf of their own to take home. Because it’s March in Scotland and you need one.

Rhythm of Events

Monday, 8 March — The Artist at Work

Time	Programme
3:00–4:00	Arrival, check-in, tea and something sweet
4:00–4:30	Welcome to Artists on Artists: introductions, practicalities and settling in
4:30–6:30	Opening Workshop
6:30–8:30	Collective dinner
8:45 onward	Informal conversation, independent writing — or sleep for ye of long travel!

Tuesday, 9 March — Practice & Obsession

Time	Programme
7:00–9:00	Quiet morning / optional early swim
9:00–9:30	Breakfast / optional Morning Pages in the conservatory
9:30–11:30	Workshop
11:30–12:00	Tea break
12:00–1:00	Guided Writing: The Artist at Work — writing the gestures, tools, habits, repetitions and tiny decisions through which creative work actually gets made
1:00–2:00	Lunch
2:00–6:30	Open Afternoon — protected writing time, reading, wandering, observing, or optional one-to-one manuscript conferences
6:30–7:30	Collective dinner with our writing tutor
7:45–9:00	After Dark — sharing great words and works from artists across disciplines
9:00 onward	Informal gathering / independent writing / free time

Wednesday, 10 March — The Intelligence of the Hand

Time	Programme
7:00–9:00	Quiet morning / optional early swim
9:00–9:30	Breakfast / optional Morning Pages in the conservatory
9:30–11:30	Workshop
11:30–12:00	Tea break
12:00–1:00	Guided Writing: Obsession — what does an artist notice, collect, repeat, pursue or care about long after everyone else has stopped looking?
1:00–2:00	Lunch
2:00–4:00	Open Afternoon — independent writing, optional ramble or wander, reading, or one-to-one manuscript conferences
4:00–4:30	Tea and cake
4:30–5:30	Artists on Artists: Conversations on Practice — conversations with artists about work, discipline, inspiration, failure, materials and the realities of a creative life
5:30–6:30	Break
6:30–7:30	Collective dinner
7:45–9:15	Artists on Artists Open Mic Night — participant readings, works in progress and conversation
9:15 onward	Fireside gathering / independent writing / free time

Thursday, 11 March — Back to the Page

Time	Programme
7:00–8:00	Quiet morning / optional early swim
8:00–9:00	Breakfast / optional Morning Pages in the conservatory
9:00–9:45	Working Breakfast: Where Does the Work Go? — sharing our experiences with editors, submissions, agents and publication possibilities
9:45–10:30	Closing Guided Writing: Back to the Page — what can you borrow from the working life of another kind of artist and bring into your own?
10:30–11:00	Closing Circle — and don’t forget to autograph the Story Burn canvas!
11:00	Retreat concludes

Core Anchor Texts

Used in Workshops and at Readings

We’ll read selected excerpts together. There is no expectation that you arrive having read any of these works. You’re welcome to bring other texts that speak to the week’s theme, or just to enjoy the collection presented.

• Dave Eggers — “Contrapposto”
  • Artistic identity, creative development, and the strange process through which an artist and a creative life take shape.
• Chaim Potok — My Name Is Asher Lev
  • Learning to see, finding a teacher, developing a craft, and discovering what devotion to artistic work can demand.
• Tracy Chevalier — The Lady and the Unicorn
  • Design, weaving, materials and collaboration — and the many hands and kinds of knowledge required to turn an artistic idea into a physical thing.
• A. S. Byatt — The Children’s Book
  • Artists, potters, writers, puppeteers and makers — creative lives shaped by workshops, apprenticeship, family, ambition and the Arts and Crafts world.
• Jim Jarmusch — Paterson (film)
  • Routine, attention, and the quiet discipline of making art within the rhythms of an ordinary life.
• Thomas Riedelsheimer — Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time (film)
  • Process, patience, failure, and beginning again — following an artist as he works with landscape, materials, weather, and time.

Participants are invited to bring a work (if you have room in your travel bag) that portrays an artist, maker, performer, craftsperson, designer, or creative community particularly well—or particularly badly—and to discuss what writers can learn from those portrayals.