Explore
Travel beyond the guidebook. Drift along tropical waterways, wander through extraordinary gardens and discover Sri Lanka's colourful markets, temples and coastline.
PLAY FAIR
Creative Journey Retreats
Experience, Explore, Create
A small creativity retreat for people who have run out of room to think. Studio time, tropical walks, proper food, and twelve good people around one table.
The USP
The Art of Time Expansion
We design experiences that slow time perception, sharpen attention, and stretch the present moment.
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
We offer the kind of playful travel, connection, and freedom that comes from getting your hands dirty, laughing hard, and losing track of time, always staying authentic to the local culture, craft, and artisans of the land we are in.
Three steps, 5 days
Experience
Taste the island through generous breakfasts, local cooking, and food shared around the table. Meet the people, hear the stories and experience Sri Lankan culture from the inside.
Create
Get your hands dirty. Experiment with cyanotype, batik and upcycled tropical materials—and return home with beautiful pieces that carry the story of your journey.
What's included
Small groups, generous space
Twelve places only. The retreat is built around four gentle steps — explore, experience, create and connect — with community as the thread that runs through all of them.
- All materials, tuition and workshop access included
- Five nights in a tropical retreat house room of your own
- Every meal cooked from local produce
- Exploration day transport and entrance to gardens and architecture
- Optional evening crits — never compulsory
Sri Lanka south coast
Retreat accommodation & atmosphere
Your home is a colonial-style house surrounded by coconut palms and bougainvillea, a short trip from the beach. Rooms are simple, airy and private; the atmosphere is slow, warm, friendly, family led and intentionally unhurried.
Mornings begin with birdsong and fresh fruit, afternoons drift between studio, pool, garden and sea, and evenings gather around a long table with good food and better conversation.
FROM £1,500 pp
all-inclusive, five nights · deposit £500
Food
Taste Sri Lanka
Take a cooking lesson with a local chef and learn how to cook with local ingredients. From fragrant curries and coconut sambol to hoppers fresh from the pan, you'll discover the rhythms of Sri Lankan flavours and take the stories home with you.
Breakfast is Sri Lankan or European with local tea and coffee, dinner is a long-table feast of local produce, and fresh tropical fruit is never far away. Each evening winds down with a cocktail or mocktail sundowner.
Culture & Craft
Explore Ena de Silva batik & Bawa garden and architecture
On our exploration day we visit the Geoffrey Bawa gardens and architecture — a masterclass in tropical modernism where building and landscape breathe together. Wander through courtyards, water features and shaded verandas that have shaped how the world thinks about Sri Lankan design.
We stop to see the extraordinary Ena de Silva batik work for inspiration — bold colour, botanical motifs and generations of craft knowledge passed from hand to hand. Her legacy opens the door for your own experiments with wax, dye and pattern back in the studio.
UK events
Retreats & creativity events in the UK
Between Sri Lanka retreats we run one-day creative workshops in the UK. The Loved Object workshop is a gentle, hands-on session in cyanotype and mixed-media collage — bring an object that holds a story and turn it into art.
No experience needed. All materials, guidance and a very good lunch are included.
Ask about UK datesThe Twisters
Founded by two sisters
Creative Journey Retreats is an independently owned brand founded by us, two sisters, Zoe and Rebecca Russell-Turner, 'The Twisters.'
Fueled by a shared love of travel, connection, creativity, and community, our story began twice: first as children, then again at midlife.
Travel opened our world when our family moved from suburban Nottingham to Kingston Town, Jamaica. Growing up deep in the Blue Mountains, existing between cultures taught us that the most powerful education happens outside your comfort zone. We learned that immersing yourself in unfamiliar places doesn't just broaden your horizons; it fundamentally expands who you can become.
That childhood revelation became our compass. Having traveled the world multiple times, for work and pleasure, we never lost that sense of wonder and possibility that comes from truly inhabiting a place.
Food
Sri Lankan or European breakfast
Every morning starts your way: a full Sri Lankan spread of hoppers, dhal, coconut sambol and fresh tropical fruit, or a lighter European breakfast of eggs, bread and yoghurt — both served with local Ceylon tea and freshly ground coffee.
Lunches are long and shared, and dinners are cooked with produce from the market that morning. Vegetarian, vegan and allergy-friendly menus are no trouble at all.
Rest & arrival
Yoga, massage and a door-to-door welcome
Morning yoga sets the pace of the day, and an Ayurvedic massage by the pool unwinds whatever the flight put in your shoulders. You'll be picked up from the airport by our own driver and brought door to door, so the retreat starts the moment you land.
Creative workshops, journalling, batik and turtles
Journalling
Bind and stamp your own leather journal, then fill it with notes, sketches and pressed leaves as the week goes on.
Batik & cyanotype
Wax, dye and sun-print with local artisans, working with tropical plants and upcycled cloth.
Snorkelling with turtles
Slip into the warm shallows and swim alongside green turtles grazing over the reef.
Garden wanderings
Sketchbook walks through extraordinary gardens, temples and back lanes of the south coast.
Meet Rebecca
A hybrid of academia and entrepreneurship
As a Lecturer in MA Textiles and Fashion, Rebecca has taught at universities in the UK, Vietnam and Sri Lanka, guiding emerging designers and entrepreneurs to find their unique creative voices.
Most recently she led 'The Creative Journey' programme at the prestigious Jimmy Choo Academy in Mayfair, earning five-star reviews from the summer-course participants. There she specialised in unlocking creative confidence in people from all backgrounds, proving that creativity isn't reserved for the naturally gifted, but can be awakened in everyone.
Beyond academia, Rebecca has launched her own creative ventures: TAT, her fashion label stocked in Topshop, and Yung Club, an immersive yoga brand that debuted at Selfridges' Everybody exhibition inside a giant projection-filled Mother Ship — a testament to her belief that creativity thrives at the intersection of unexpected disciplines.
Meet Zoe
20 years as an executive global producer
For two decades Zoe has been the force behind some of the world's most ambitious brand experiences. As an executive creative producer and global event strategist, she's partnered with clients like NikeLab, Airbnb and Uber to create immersive moments.
Her work spans the globe: hanging off the Chrysler Building in New York for Nike, building full-scale Lego houses in Denmark for Airbnb, orchestrating NikeLab's multi-continent event tours, and producing at the World Economic Forum in Davos for Uber.
Every Creative Journey retreat benefits from this mastery: world-class production standards, meticulous attention to detail, and the confidence that comes from delivering excellence on the global stage.
What changes
Creative confidence, for emerging entrepreneurs and curious makers
Our retreats and courses are designed to shift how you see your own creativity. Past guests leave with clearer ideas, braver work, and the confidence to keep building — whether that's a business, a collection, or a new creative practice.
