Our HeARTlands Creative Retreats offer artists, writers and creatives opportunities to step away from the everyday, spend time in inspiring places and reconnect with their creativity, themselves and one another.
Rooted in the HeARTlands values of welcome, creativity, connection and belonging, retreats may include time for individual creative practice alongside shared meals, conversation, walking, storytelling, workshops, visits to places of cultural or natural significance — and something increasingly difficult to find in everyday life- time and space.
Recommend a Venue
Retreats may be held in Ireland or abroad. If you are the owner of an art or wellbeing retreat venue that is immersed in the natural environment and would be suitable, please get in touch with your recommendation.
Launching in 2027- Stay Tuned
Some of our retreats will take place within Ireland's Heartlands. Others may bring us to different parts of Ireland and, as our international relationships grow, to places further afield. Each will be shaped by the landscape and community that hosts us.
Our retreats are not about producing a perfect piece of work or proving how creative you are. They are about making space for curiosity, reflection, inspiration and creative renewal.
Come as an artist, writer or creative.
Come with an idea.
Come looking for one.
Or simply come curious about where the journey might lead.
This will be your creative pilgimage.
There are many ways to travel.
Some journeys are about reaching a destination. Others are about what we discover — about a place, about one another and sometimes about ourselves — along the way. At HeARTlands, we think of this as Creative Pilgrimage.
For us, pilgrimage does not have to mean travelling to a sacred destination. It can simply mean journeying with intention — allowing ourselves to slow down, become curious, encounter new landscapes and stories, meet new people and remain open to being changed by the experience. Sometimes that journey might take us across a room to meet someone new. Sometimes into an artist's studio, an ancient landscape, a gallery or a community we have never visited before. Sometimes it will take us across Ireland. And in the future, it will take us beyond our shores.
As HeARTlands grows, our Creative Pilgrimages will create opportunities for artists, writers and creatives to travel together — visiting places rich in art, landscape, history, culture and story, meeting other creative communities and sharing our own Landscapes, Legends and Love Stories along the way.
We don't expect everyone to begin in the same place or walk at the same pace. Some will arrive with decades of creative experience; others may only be beginning. The journey is not about arriving first. It is about walking well together. We share what we know. We remain curious about what we don't. We celebrate one another's successes, make space for new voices and honour the people, places and stories we encounter.
Because sometimes the most important thing we discover when we travel is not another place. It is one another. We travel towards one another. Wherever the journey takes us, we carry the same HeARTlands spirit with us:
Creativity. Curiosity. Generosity. Welcome.
The place may change.
The welcome does not.
Teruel, Spain
Verona, Italy
Wittenberg, Germany
Coimbra, Portugal
Lucca, Italy
Carcassone, France
Cortona, Italy
Arles, France