How would you describe your job? And what form does creative ‘play’ take outside of this?
I’m a senior creative at Anyways, which means I work across a range of projects from art direction and commissioning, to ideation and strategy to producing activations and installations. My role involves lots of video calls with project teams, planning and multi-tasking. I love it but it can sometimes be hectic!

As a change of pace on evenings and weekends, I do pottery in my studio in Deptford. I took it up five years ago when I was feeling a little creatively jaded and thought a new hobby might jumpstart me back into action.

After getting over the initial shock of how difficult it is to make anything even vaguely resembling a pot, I found that I loved the way it allowed me to creatively switch lanes for a few hours. While it isn’t usually emotionally charged as Keith from The Great Pottery Throw Down would suggest, it’s a brilliant way to slow things down and do something very different to my nine-to-five.

Do you find this influences your regular work?
It brings me into a different headspace, allowing me to slow down after a busy day at work. This helps to creatively recharge my batteries and allows one creative process to fuel another.

While my job allows me to ‘make things’, the process is often screen-based. In contrast, pottery allows me to make with my hands and get messy while taking time away from the laptop. It also requires quiet and concentration, allowing me to focus in a very different way to my job. It has helped me to remember to switch off sometimes – to mute Slack and close tabs.

Do you think it is important to have a work-play balance?
Playing often gets forgotten about as we mosey into adulthood, but it’s a great thing to find time for, whatever our age. For those of us that work in the creative industry, we might be lucky enough to find inspiration through our jobs, but it’s important to remember that our working hours have many constraints.

Play – in whatever form it takes – is different, as it should be for you and no one else. It should be a time for you to switch lanes and allow your mind to wander. Pottery allows me to do this. As I work with my hands and focus on the wheel, my mind calms and moves away from the busyness of nine-to-five.

My advice for someone looking to do the same is not to worry too much about the output, or what your version of play looks like. I’ve found that pottery, doing terrible drawings, knitting ill-fitting hats and weeding the garden all allow me to relax and play, but it’s different for everyone. Try not to worry about any sense of productivity and instead just focus on making time for yourself.

How would you describe your job? And what form does creative ‘play’ take outside of this?
I work as a freelance illustrator, spanning character design, editorial, fashion, animation and branding.

During the first lockdown, my boyfriend and I decided to make pizza for our neighbours, in exchange for a cash donation to the local food bank. We saw it as a good way to meet the neighbours and support the local community. I started making designs to promote the cause, we got some flyers printed and the neighbours responded positively. We were making pizzas every fortnight and quickly got good at it.

Word soon spread, and we were joined by a local pizza maker who we met on Instagram. As a trio we’ve popped up at a few local businesses [as Short Road Pizza], which has been great fun, but we're currently deciding what to do next and how to balance it with our day jobs.

Do you find this influences your regular work?
There’s a lot of graft involved with doing Short Road Pizza. There’s a few days of admin and prep, then the pizza day, then the clean-down. It’s important that my illustration schedule is clear when there’s a pizza event as I'm a terrible multitasker. I would like to get better at that though.

Making pizza is really social, as I’ll be chatting with customers and offering customer service. I’m quite naturally introverted which is great for a life as an illustrator, but it’s nice to sharpen my people skills.

Do you think it is important to have a work-play balance?
Absolutely, but I think it’s about finding out what works best for you. You might have periods where you have so much work that you have to turn down social engagements, so just make sure you reward yourself with the thing that helps you relax and switch off. For me, it’s hard to stay inspired with fresh ideas if I’m not looking away from my work enough.

How would you describe your job? And what form does creative ‘play’ take outside of this?
I currently work part-time as a graphic designer at CYOA, and the rest of the time I am creating collages – by hand and then manipulated digitally. My real creative play however, is my writing practice.

Writing is something I have always loved and taken pride in. I didn’t think I could ever write poetry, until I got my heartbroken for the first time. For me, poetry starts as considering a moment, a scene in front of me, a comment or a feeling, which triggers a phrase or line in my head, then I get it down on my phone or laptop. If I have time, I might start expanding on it or dump it in a big Google Doc called ‘unsorted’ which I revisit when I’m sat at home in the mood to write.

With visual stuff, I can compare myself a lot more to existing aesthetics, trying to fit in with those trends. With writing, I know it’s finished when I’ve hit the nail on the head of what I wanted to say. I can’t get bogged down comparing it to other literature, or thinking ‘Sylvia Plath would have written this better.’

More than anything else, I use poetry as a tool to decipher my human experience. It feels like the truest way of communicating for me.

Do you find this influences your regular work?
I’d say my writing practice has assisted my visual practice a lot. With graphic design, words are just as important as the visuals to communicate something. I love titling things, and coming up with word play to make a project more attention-grabbing.

One of my projects was a publication called Predictive Poetry. It was essentially a collection of text messages only using predictive text, presented as personal narratives that were quite funny, but showcased that individual’s most frequently used vocabulary.

Do you think it is important to have a work-play balance?
Definitely. People say you should have two passions: one for your career, and one to keep as a hobby. I firmly believe this.

Make sure whatever passion you choose as your work is not going to kill that passion for you! Then your passion that’s more personal can become your ‘play’. It’s so beneficial to maintain a relationship with something that’s entirely yours, and that for me is writing! I guess I’m just lucky that my form of play is easy and accessible – I can fit it into five minutes.

I’ve always been a huge of advocate of working hard, playing hard. The ‘playing’ part is always what gives me the long-awaited burst of inspiration for the work! It’s good to take time off when you can – your mental health is important. All my best ideas come when I’m not being grilled to find them.