Sketch Scotland
An art-based English holiday in Scotland
Use Your Love of Art to Unlock Your English
This is your permission slip to become the person you’ve always imagined.
The one with paint on their hands, ideas in their notebook, and English that feels natural.
Lose yourself in art-making — and find yourself in English.
You’ll go home with a thousand stories to tell, and they’ll live in your mind in English — not as translations, but as memories.
Sketch Scotland is a two-week, creativity-led English holiday in Scotland.
English support is woven through sketching, making, cultural visits, and shared experiences. Art-making provides the starting point for conversation, reflection, and real-world English use.
Dates: 4–18 September 2026
Two weeks allows time to slow down, settle into creative rhythms, and let English emerge naturally through lived experience.
or adult second-language English speakers (intermediate level and above) who:
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enjoy creative play, sketching, or making (no experience required)
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want to practise English through real experiences rather than classroom study
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value small groups, calm pacing, and meaningful conversation
Maximum 3 guests per week, allowing for a personalised, unhurried experience.
Perthshire, Scotland
Based in and around Crieff, a welcoming Highland town surrounded by woodland, gardens, lochs, and working artist studios. We’ll explore Perthshire, known for its strong craft traditions and deep connection between landscape and making.
Why English Feels More Comfortable Here
English is part of the holiday, but it isn’t the thing you’re trying to manage.
When your hands are busy sketching, shaping, stitching, or making, attention shifts. You’re focused on colour, form, texture, and ideas — not on how your English sounds.
Creativity and anxiety sit on the same lever — you can’t fully have one without easing the other.
Conversation grows out of what you’re doing and noticing, rather than something you’re performing. Words come more freely because they’re connected to experience, not effort.
That’s why speaking English here tends to feel lighter — and why confidence grows without being pushed.
Sketch Scotland
The Story of this Holiday
This is a two-week creative English holiday built around sketching, making, close looking, and real conversation.
You’ll spend time drawing, painting, photographing, and working with simple materials — sometimes indoors, sometimes outside, often stopping more than once because something is worth looking at properly.
There are visits to gardens, lochs, museums, studios, and small cultural spaces. You sketch, you make notes, you talk about what you’re seeing and doing. English comes in naturally — as you describe choices, share ideas, and reflect on what’s emerging.
Some days are fuller, with workshops or outings. Others are slower. There’s space to work in your sketchbook, to rest, to wander, and to let the day take shape.
You’re not rushed, and you’re not performing — in your art or in your English.
By the end of the holiday, you’ve made things, filled pages, and gathered experiences that stay with you.
And when you remember them later, English comes with them — because it was part of the living, not something added on.
What People Notice By The End Of The Week
By the end of the holiday, many people notice a sense of belonging — to the place, to the group, and to themselves as expressive, creative people.
After two weeks of living creatively — making, noticing, sharing ideas, and taking things at a humane pace — something settles. English is no longer separate from who they are.
It’s bundled together with pleasure, creativity, and connection.
The voice they’re using — whether in art, in conversation, or in reflection — feels truer, more powerful, and more available.
What stays with them is not just what they made or where they went, but the experience of expressing themselves fully — and knowing that this voice is now part of their English too.
Art & Creative Practice
Art-making is at the heart of Sketch Scotland — as a way of spending time attentively, creatively, and in good company.
Each week includes gentle creative prompts and shared making sessions. You’ll sketch, paint, photograph, and experiment with materials such as watercolour, monoprint, collage, and simple mixed media. No experience is needed. Curiosity matters more than technique.
Some sessions happen indoors around a table; others take place outdoors, sketchbooks in hand, responding to gardens, lochs, historic spaces, and small details you might otherwise walk past.
You’ll keep a personal sketchbook throughout the holiday — part visual diary, part notebook. Many people find that combining image and text helps them notice more, remember more, and reflect more freely in English.
Alongside this, there are visits to working artist studios and hands-on workshops with local makers. These bring fresh ways of seeing and new materials into the week, and open up natural conversation around process, choice, and ideas.
At the end of the holiday, we host a small, relaxed pop-up exhibition at Blue Noun — a simple way to share what you’ve been working on and to close the experience together.
This gives creativity enough space to do what it does best: open attention, invite expression, and carry English with it.
A Simple Next Step
If you’re wondering whether this holiday will suit you, the next step is a short Zoom call.
It’s a chance for us to talk things through together — for you to ask questions, share what you’re looking for, and get a feel for whether this way of working (and working with me) feels right for you.
The call also helps make sure expectations are aligned, so everyone arrives knowing what kind of week they’re stepping into.
These holidays aren’t designed to be booked on impulse — the Zoom call gives us both space to check that it’s a good match.
If this sounds like the kind of English experience you’ve been looking for, let’s talk it through.
Book a Zoom call to explore your holiday
What to Know About Our English Holidays
Before you decide if you want to book a Zoom chat, you may find it helpful to explore how we design our English holidays and support your experience.
→ Real-World English
How English develops through lived experience, conversation, and everyday moments — not classroom performance.
→ Discover the Mix that Makes a Blue Noun Holiday Unique
A simple visual diagram showing how activities, schedule and support combine across a week.
→ What’s Included
Practical details, support, and what your holiday fee covers.
