2026 EUROPEAN RETREATS in Portugal and Greece
If you would like to be the first to know about the new Writing and Art Retreats in Portugal and Hydra, Greece in 2026
Please click on the links below to receive the Early Bird Newsletter
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springtime Art Adventures
in Portugal with
portuguese artists & artisans and Anna (inc Touring)
5 - 20 MAY 2026
PORTUGAL - ART
A curated selection of Art Workshops
with Portuguese artists,
plus Cultural tours
and Touring the Alentejo region
with Anna Kwiecinska
Join Anna in Lisbon for 5 days, with daily art workshops, including ceramics, urban sketching and botanical drawing with professional artists, and discover some of Portugal's most exciting private art collections with specialised art historians and guides.
Then lets' go touring for a week whist our pots are firing ... enjoy 7 days slowly exploring highlights of the Alentejo region,, with a variety of creative workshops including book-binding, cyanotype print-making and jewellery-making whilst sampling the region's excellent wines and divine cuisine.
You'll stay in 3 beautiful locations, including the C.17th residence of a noble family in the heart of UNESCO World Heritage town, Evora (the designated 'European City of Culture 2027), and a tiny white-washed Arabic hilltown, and complete your journey with a relaxing sojourn in a thermal spring resort hidden in cool pine-forested mountains.
Return to Lisbon to collect your ceramics, to add to all the things you've created along your tour..
enjoy portugal in the cooler days of early Autumn with author Joanne Fedler to discover memoir
around the theme of
'Coming to Elderhood'
5 - 8 SEPTEMBER 2026
PORTUGAL
LISBON ART PRELUDE (optional add-on)
and
8 - 20 SEPTEMBER 2026
ALENTEJO WRITING RETREAT
Joanne Fedler & Anna Kwiecinska
Rich offerings in September, with our 8-day writing retreat preceded by an optional art experience in Lisbon for 3 days: afternoon ceramics and art workshops (suitable for any level - including newcomers), with mornings in the company of specialist guides to take you beyond the decorative surface of Lisbon.
Travel with us to Evora, a UNESCO World Heritage walled city - and European Capital of Culture in 2027 - for 6 nights, staying in the sanctuary of a C.17th nobleman's home (we will have the entire property, with a swimming pool all to ourselves).
This is followed by a short journey farther into the Alentejo, to spend 3 nights in a C.18th convento, where forest walks, swimming, delicious cuisine, wines and history will be the backdrop for you to work on your writing in exquisite peace, with a personal session with Joanne included.
" We have two lives
And the second one begins when you realise you only have one."
Mario de Andrade
Together we will work with the material of our lives – no matter how shattering or modest – and weave them into a memoir that makes sense of a life fully inhabited. We will take the shambles and shards of our experiences and work out: what did it all mean? What is the sum of it all, this great, rollicking, thrilling exhausting business called ‘my life’?
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Explore the legendary island of hydra
with an artist's eye, in the company of British painter Becky Blair
27 SEPTEMBER - 4 OCTOBER 2026
HYDRA ART RETREAT
Becky Blair & Anna Kwiecinska
Artists have sought out this island they call 'The Rock' in the Saronic Gulf for a century - seeking the special light, the solitude of a landscape without vehicles, and the immense beauty of a Greek island largely unchanged by time, due to its unique history and subsequent listing as a national monument.
It's mid-Autumn, you've arrived onto one of Greece's most picturesque islands - with only donkeys, water taxis and meandering footpaths and horse trails - and you have ahead of you a week of working closely with Becky Blair who has developed a truly unique style, central to which is her lexicon of symbols which evolve through the techniques she is going to share with you this week.
This sketch-booking through observation is an ever-evolving process, and keeping a collection of books over time is an incredibly satisfying thing in itself, but these books become a precious repository for all of your creative endeavors to follow, whether it’s as a painter, ceramicist, textile designer, jewellery maker, glass artist - in fact, anything where bringing your unique interpretation of something you want to communicate visually is important.
On Hydra, the water is still deliciously comfortable for swimming, the cooler evenings perfect for exploring the many charming seaside tavernas, and your traditional Greek accommodation is an exquisite old mansion - now boutique hotel - in a quietly central part of the port which you can reach without climbing all those steps for which Hydra is (in)famous.
GET ANNA'S FREE HYDRA GUIDES
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Hydra Island, Greece
in the gentle days of Autumn
is our destination for
The Holy and The Broken
- Reclaim Your Voice -
a unique creative writing experience
with Joanne Fedler
& Anna Kwiecinska
9 - 15 OCTOBER 2026
HYDRA CREATIVE WRITING
Joanne Fedler & Anna Kwiecinska
You are invited to attend a 5 day writing retreat on the magical Greek island of Hydra to inspire, deepen and invigorate your writing. We will use the lyrics and poetry of songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen as prompts, invitations and windows into your own creativity and to unravel and bind the braided threads of the heart.
Beginning with Joanne’s manifesto, The Bill of Writes, we will turn away from self-doubt towards the invitations of the physical space of Hydra where our senses, imaginations and emotions can be ignited and captured on the page. We will explore the cracks in our emotional and imaginal worlds where the light comes in, to help us access and build a writing practice that fits the shape of our soul.
‘… it isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply.’
― Leonard Cohen
Over this time, we will write hymns, poems, prayers and songs. We will write love letters to ourselves and the world. Some call this ‘memoir’ but this offering is more than simply learning the craft of using the self to make art. Through the doorways of Leonard Cohen’s rich phrases and metaphors, we will explore what it means to reach inwards for our voice to produce ‘a cry above the suffering.’
If (you are) ‘this thing that needs to sing,’ then you are being called to Hydra where Leonard Cohen spent many years writing and engaging with his muse to find the abundance of inspiration from which all creativity flows back into the world.
GET ANNA'S FREE HYDRA GUIDES
WHAT PEOPLE SAY
For anyone with a desire to write… to be on reteeat with Joanne is to be in the presence of a true master of her craft. I feel excited, insoired and confident to puruse my own writing.
Michele H. Sydney, 2025
(on Writing by the Sea in Bali Retreat with Joanne Fedler)
Anna’s ‘Writing by the Sea in Bali’ retreat , held in a stunning sanctuary, was the perfect place to totally sink into our writing. Anna took care of our every needwith such warmth and care, leaving us able to focus on what we came here for. Will absolutely return.
Michele H. Sydney, 2025
(on Writing by the Sea in Bali Retreat with Joanne Fedler)
What I got out of it: I have a revived passion to re-write and then finish my book. I feel that I now have the tools and the understanding of processes which will enable me to tell the story which I feel must be told. I learnt that everyone has the right to write.
Writer’s name withheld, 2025
on Writing by the Sea in Bali Retreat with Joanne Fedler)
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