Villa Pia is not a bad place to spend a week. The blue-shuttered stone country manor sits in the shadow of a medieval castle in the hilltop village of Lippiano, on the Umbrian-Tuscan border. Once the summer escape of a Florentine family, the house features five acres of sloping grounds that look out across a patchwork of tobacco fields and chestnut trees backdropped by the Apennine Mountains.
Every autumn, it is home to creative retreats held by photographer and creative director Charlotte Bland and designer and author Ros Badger. The British duo, whose friendship was forged over Instagram a decade ago, have been hosting retreats at the villa since 2019, and their guests are drawn to the simple, nurturing cycle of daily life—eat, create, rest.
“We believe that everyone is creative, but it gets squashed out of you at school, at work, and in life,” says Bland. “We’re just giving people the time and the space they need to make things.”
It’s a holiday rather than a boot camp, and the secret to Bland and Badger’s success lies in the program’s non-prescriptive nature. There’s an appealing menu of pursuits, such as collage, cookery, calligraphy, photography, bookbinding, and flower arranging, but guests can dip in and out of activities as they please. Teachers, who have included the floral stylist and writer Amy Merrick and the Sardinia-based English author and chef Letitia Clark, are suggestive rather than dictatorial.
Unsurprisingly, the appetite for their offering is growing. “Tickets sell out faster and faster,” says Badger. The pair is planning a similar house-party-style retreat in Cornwall.
Worlds away from the traditional wellness retreats that focus on fasting and yoga, the goal here is to cultivate the imagination and have fun. Yet the reasons people are drawn to the retreat—and so far, by chance rather than design, it’s been a women-only affair—are manifold. “This is my artistic top-up,” says one attendee, who recently transitioned careers from fashion to corporate engineering. Another lone traveler extols the comfort of knowing she will be engaged in creative activities with like-minded companions.
Some attendees are overstretched as bosses, parents, and caregivers. The joy of drifting demand-free with the promise of a long lunch and an even longer communal four-course dinner—this is Italy, after all—is reward enough.
“We believe that everyone is creative, but it gets squashed out of you at school, at work, and in life.”
The Bland Badger retreat always kicks off with an outing, from a cultural tour of Florence to a trip to the antiques market of ancient Arezzo. By the first aperitivo—guests help themselves from the generously stocked fridge—social barriers quickly erode. Much of the magic happens around the dinner table.
“I’d forgotten how important it is to simply spend time with other women,” says one guest. The experience often acts as a catalyst, supercharging career shifts, sparking creative epiphanies, and forging long-lasting friendships. Past retreaters have gone on to become ceramists and food writers or come back as teachers.
For Ruth Ribeaucourt, the Irish photographer and founder of Faire magazine, the appetite for creative retreats has intensified since the stay-home orders of the coronavirus. Ribeaucourt, a former event planner, has been running a program of trips to her adopted corner of Provence since 2019. Initially centered around antiquing and crafting, they have since evolved to cater more practically to professional needs among freelancers pushed to the brink by deadlines and immediate economic demands.
Her recent Storyteller retreat, which focused on the art of image-making, attracted professional photographers alongside an architect, a lawyer, and an author.
“We’re stepping away from the dirty dishes and the laundry, or the roles we play in our relationships and our jobs,” says Ribeaucourt. “There’s this sense of the freedom of a new country.”
Rather than collapsing on a sun lounger at a luxury beach resort, today’s travelers increasingly want purpose-filled travel experiences. “Before, we had travel agents; now we have retreat leaders,” says Jade Moyano, the Lisbon-based Brazilian travel journalist and co-founder (with author Erin Rose) of the writers’ retreat Trust & Travel. What began as a single workshop has developed into an itinerant retreat hosted everywhere from Nicaragua to Morocco to the Sicilian island of Pantelleria. An antidote to the seriousness and solitude of many writers’ retreats, the focus is on sharing and guidance and being in good company. Adventure is a crucial component.
There’s plenty of that in Tangier, where the English interior designer and ceramist Gavin Houghton and the artist Joan Hecktermann host trips centered around painting. Their itineraries are an entry point into otherwise tricky-to-navigate destinations. Days are devoted to capturing the city’s Moorish architecture, café culture, and hot-pink bougainvillea in watercolor, pastel, and charcoal. “It’s like a children’s art school,” says Houghton.
“The pandemic came along and sparked this big awakening in people,” says Moyano, who sees the role of retreat host as a melding of cultural curator, professional mentor, and social facilitator. “People are investing more money in these experiences as they understand it’s an investment [in themselves] that’s worth making,” she says. “They’re feeling bolder.” First we baked sourdough; now artistic awakening beckons.
Aimee Farrell is a Cambridge, U.K.–based writer. She is a contributing editor at the Financial Times’s HTSI and a contributing writer at T: The New York Times Style Magazine and British Vogue