Why we're taking an August of Rest
Image of a deep blue sky in the evening with a few fluffy clouds
Rising’s Co-Director Jess Bunyan, reflects on what closing the Agency for August means to the team and why it’s important.
Every year we get to August and it feels like either we slow down or the work does. Suddenly people remember to book some time off and that school holiday feeling kicks in. So this year we’ve decided to plan ahead and close the agency for the whole of August.
I know that sounds a little dramatic, but hear me out.
The pace at Rising is one of the best and worst things about us – it’s why we’ve grown so much in the last six years even with such a small team, but it’s also made it difficult at times for people to take time out and know they won’t come back to a completely different world. It’s not just us though. ‘Creative jobs’ are often seen as places where people will put extra work/hours/energy into what they’re doing because they love it. And yes! We are incredibly lucky to work in the creative sector, with our amazing community, and make beautiful work. BUT in the words of writer Otegha Uwagba, “I certainly do write because I enjoy doing it, I love doing it. And that’s the same with a lot of other creative workers. But then that’s almost supposed to partially compensate you. And it’s like, well, my bank doesn’t accept my love as legal tender.” And it also won’t help you avoid burnout.
The embodied rest of pausing from work as well as the physical act of resting in public is often met with hostility. The stories shared as part of Raquel Meseguer's 'A Crash Course in Cloudspotting' show how prevalent this is, particularly for people with invisible disabilities. Our latest WhoseFuture campaign highlights how the social model of disability could address these societal norms and simplify disabled people's lives. If we could not only take time off from work but also sit, lie, sleep and rest when and where we need to, people living with chronic pain and other invisible disabilities wouldn't even have to ask to.
Me and Euella are almost one year into our Co-Directorship now and this feels like the perfect opportunity to pause. Along with the leadership transition in the last year we wrapped up the BE IT programme, Resourcing Racial Justice and Our Culture. We said goodbye (kinda) to Eli Lower from the team and welcomed Priyanka Raval and Tilda Boyer into two brand new roles for the agency. Cai Burton and Alfie Dwyer stepped down from Rising’s board and we recruited five new members: Tspiora St Clair Knights, Momin Mohamed, LC Groux-Moreau, Ant Lightfood and Grace Sodzi-Smith. We also moved into our first post-pandemic studio together at Arnolfini as Creators in Residence with Let's Make Art.
There’s been a lot of change, beginnings and endings and we’re at a point where we want to take stock and sit with where we are so we can really interrogate where we want to go.
Image of a blue sky through green leaves of a fern like tree
We’ve been big on rest and reflection for a while now, but we’re always looking for more ways to really LIVE it as a practice in our work and as an employer. And so that’s where our August of Rest comes in. It’s an opportunity for the team to invest in themselves personally, with solo reflection, intention setting, training and rest. But also together. One of the biggest highlights of the Resourcing Racial Justice project was the collective reflection Roseanna and Euella did together and we’ve been using quarterly Action Learning Sets to do some of this work as a team across the year. We hope the spaciousness of an entire month allows us to re-calibrate for healthier ways of being and doing.
Ok, that’s all lovely but what does it actually practically mean?
WHAT WE’LL BE TAKING TIME OFF FROM
Meeting about new work
Delivering events, workshops or facilitating
Replying to non-urgent emails
Community meetups
Community 1:1s
Open studio
Sending out newsletters, including opportunities
WHAT WE’LL BE DOING INSTEAD
Setting intentions for our month of rest and documenting our discoveries
Having an away day with the team and board
Making access documents together for the team
Visiting organisations and practitioners we admire
Reflecting independently and together
Doing that training we can never find the time for
Making together
Picnic-ing together and napping in the park
Having a movie night and book club together
Reviewing where we are individually, in our careers, in our relationships with Rising
Having coaching conversations with others
Deciding what we want to do with our learning and continue in our day-to-day
I encourage you to think about how you are able to rest more over the next month, not in a way that takes away from what you do but in a way that nourishes you.
Why not work different hours so you can enjoy the long sunny days more?
Or sit in a park whilst you research a topic you’ve been meaning to read more about?
Or maybe even plan some time off with no commitments apart from rest?
If you want to support our month of rest and hear more about it, please consider joining the Rising Alliance or increasing your regular donation.