ATLA

📣 Something new is stirring...

At ATLA, we believe that creativity doesn’t always follow a straight line.

Some stories arrive in fragments. Some research resists neat conclusions. Some creative practices defy categories altogether.

We’re building a space for those kinds of minds.

🌀 The Literary Lab is our new writing retreat—designed for artists, researchers, and practitioners who are looking for more than productivity. This is about reconnecting with the ideas that won’t leave you alone. Experimenting with form. Reclaiming creative time.

We’ll be sharing more soon—but if you’re the kind of person who scribbles notes on the back of receipts or edits in your head while walking the dog, this might be for you.

🗓️ October 2025
📍 Near Bath, UK
🛏️ All-inclusive from £299
🎟️ Places limited

“A creative life is an amplified life. It's a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life” – Elizabeth Gilbert

“There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Our journal

I know it's early, but some of you have to be planners...

Christmas present?

https://www.atlacommunity.com/the-journal.html

We are so delighted to announce we have been selected to benefit from ACTIVATE grant funding. This will provide us with the much needed resources to properly plan our growth over the next three years.
We're planning film installations, an AR/VR peoples museum, rural storytelling walks and more..... click the follow button to find out more.

Huge thanks to the West Midlands Combined Authority for believing in our vision.

What radical resource do we (as a community) need that has not been created yet? (There are no silly answers - comment below)

More than anything, creativity should be about joy.

Big Gobs workshop with the wonderful Jonny Nicholds
Photo by Ben Cook

“The important thing for you is to be alert, to question, to find out, so that your own initiative may be awakened.”
Bruce Lee

Celebrate With Us!

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We won a grant for R&D and we're going away to the South West to make a whole host of exciting plans for the next episodes of ATLA.

This grant is called ACTIVATE

As ATLA is only in its second year, it's important that we prioritise focus and structure so we can have sustainable impact and continue to enjoy the work we do.

We took on a studio at Coventry Artspace at the beginning of the year, and we haven't looked back. The importance of being around other people who are also doing what they love and immersing yourself in your work is key to moving forward - because where there is enjoyment there is motivation.

This has meant that for the first time, we have been able to exhibit parts of our work at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in the studio holders exhibition.

We have included framed still from Ben and Pierre's film ATUEL, a listening post with the full soundtrack, cover art from the ATLA Journal and a few samples of our Foleshill Archive which will feature in our forthcoming heritage project.

Closing Tuesday 22nd. Thank you to everyone who has visited so far.

“Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.”
George Kneller