Freelands Foundation

Artist educator Polly Brant emphasises practice as lifelong learning in this short film, while discussing making publications, materiality through collaboration and dismantling barriers for working-class primary and secondary school students.

Polly Brant is an artist-educator interested in art as common – ‘something shared by people and open for public use’. Her work spans publication, writing, digital practice and textiles, and is often produced in and with galleries and community spaces. In her practice, Polly emphasises the importance of creative education beyond the formal education system, urging for it to become part of our social infrastructure and everyone’s everyday life.  Through this short film, Polly reflects on her collaborations with primary and secondary school students, and explores how the use of everyday materials is key to dismantling barriers for the working class within art education. The film focuses on her publication-making practice, which she anchors by saying, ‘making books collaboratively allows for sharing processes and ideas.’ This approach shifts learning from ‘do it yourself’ to ‘do it together’ and proposes book-making as a tool for collaboration through material processes.

A 2026 short film documenting a collaborative project designed to support the wellbeing of teachers, whilst providing them with care and time to foster inspiration, collaboration and peer learning.

This short documentary film documents the uniquely collaborative project Creative Break Time. Created by Focal Point Gallery, Metal Southend and The Other MA (TOMA) the project takes place between 2024 to 2027 as they work closely with local school teachers and creative practitioners through a collaborative, active research project. Creative Break Time explores the wellbeing of teachers whilst providing them with care and creative time to foster inspiration, collaboration and peer learning. The local project seeks to connect through supportive residencies, artist and teacher-led workshops, teacher-training resources, in-school activities, artist-teacher partnerships and ‘deep hanging out’ with special guests from educational and creative sectors. As of 2026, the collaboration has: hung out in intensive residencies across Essex, travelled by boat to cross the Blackwater Estuary, shared our work at the iJADE 2025 Conference, hosted crits for artists and teachers, commissioned teachers to create wellbeing gifts and tools for their colleagues and co-developed new teacher training tools to ‘itch the curriculum’. The project's co-researchers include teachers from Greenways Primary, Milton Hall Primary, Shoeburyness High and St Bernard’s High School, as well as artists from all disciplines who live and work in South Essex. Through interviews and moments captured from projects, the short film spotlights the project’s ultimate mission to bring Southend artists and teachers together in transformative ways – weaving in its joyful yet grounding ethics of care, rest, wellbeing and meaningful collaboration.