In Conversation with Kayleigh Swann from Colourful Horizons: Why art doesn’t have to be perfect to matter

For Kayleigh, creativity is about much more than producing something beautiful.

It can be a way to switch off a busy brain, to find a moment of peace in the middle of a difficult day, to make new friends, to play, to experiment and, perhaps most importantly, to remember that not everything we do has to be perfect.

That philosophy sits at the heart of Plymouth-based Colourful Horizons, the creative business Kayleigh established after making the difficult decision to walk away from a 14-year career in secondary school teaching.

Today, she runs art workshops, classes and clubs for adults and children, works with home-educated young people, delivers Arts Award sessions, collaborates with other Plymouth creatives and charities, and takes creative workshops into workplaces.

But Colourful Horizons began at a point when Kayleigh realised something in her own life needed to change.

“I was working as a secondary school teacher for 14 years, primarily in art,” she explains. “As time went on, I was put in different subject areas such as geography and food technology and product design, and that wasn’t my love. I was just missing teaching art so much.”

After years in a profession she had always expected to remain in, leaving was a huge decision.

“I was really struggling about three years ago and couldn’t carry on teaching for much longer. My husband said, ‘You’ve got to get out. You’ve got to do something because this is making you miserable.’

“I did a lot of research and spoke to quite a few people. I reached out via social media and spoke to Emma of EM-MAgination, who had recently left her full-time job, and got a lot of encouragement, inspiration and some hope that there was something out there for me. 

“So I thought, well, I’m just going to try and use my skills and see what happens really, which was a huge gamble. I felt very sick handing my notice in and it took me til the last minute before the deadline to actually go through with it.”

Kayleigh handed in that notice at Christmas 2023 and left teaching in April 2024.

“Teaching was all I knew. That’s all I’d ever been and all I’d ever wanted to be. So it was quite a sad time in my life as well, but yet it was very exciting.”

Finding a new kind of classroom

Colourful Horizons began to grow almost immediately.

A friend and his wife, who had major experience in running their own businesses, helped Kayleigh navigate the less creative side of setting up on her own - particularly the admin, which she readily admits she hates – and the business name ‘Colourful Horizons’. and then two unexpected emails helped point her in a direction she hadn’t previously considered.

“I had an email from somebody asking if I’d be interested in running some home-educated sessions, and it’s just grown from there.”

Local charity MKC Heroes also got in touch, providing further opportunities and introducing Kayleigh to the thriving military community in Plymouth.

“I was very naive to the Home Educating world before Colourful Horizons. I just thought the children were at home behind their laptops! But no, they do so much, and a lot of them now come to me, which is amazing – I have met so many wonderful families along the way, some of which have become great friends.”

“It’s been the best decision I’ve ever made leaving teaching. The toughest, but I don’t regret it at all.”

There is, she laughs, one slight caveat. “I miss the pay packet though!”

What she has gained instead is the opportunity to return to the thing she loves most and to teach it in a very different way.

Joy and peace

Ask Kayleigh what creativity gives her personally and her answer is immediate. “Joy and peace.”

Art has always been part of her life. Although she doesn’t describe her parents as particularly creative, her father could draw, her grandfather painted, and she and her sisters grew up with creativity running through their lives.

“Art is my outlet. It’s my one thing besides running that takes me away from reality and just gives me the space to breathe.

“I can’t imagine not having creativity in my life. I can’t imagine anybody not having creativity in their life, to be honest. It’s just so valuable for our mental health, for our enjoyment.

“My Dad died a few years ago and I threw myself into my own personal art – it saved me and provided me with a way of dealing with my grief.”

Play

And there is another thing she thinks adults could learn from children: how to play.

“Why can’t adults play? I went into a school recently and got adults to paint their hands and create handprints, and they were saying, ‘I haven’t done this since school. This is amazing.’

“Why can’t we do that? Just because we’re not a child doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it.”

That freedom to experiment is central to Colourful Horizons.

Kayleigh remembers watching a little boy during one of her home education classes who had become completely absorbed in what he was making.

“He was humming to himself and he just looked so happy, as if he’d completely blocked out everybody else in that hall, including myself, and was just enjoying the moment and the process we were going through. For me, that was just a wow moment.”

When she first began teaching home-educated children, they would repeatedly ask for permission.

“‘Kayleigh, can I do this?’ Absolutely. As long as you’re being safe, of course you can do it.

“In my sessions, you don’t necessarily have to do the same as everybody else. You can go outside the box a little bit and bring in your own interests.”

It is markedly different from some of the restrictions she experienced in formal education.

Kayleigh laughs as she remembers teaching a portrait project where, by the end, almost everyone’s work looked remarkably similar.

“All the portraits, no word of a lie, looked exactly the same apart from the hair colour. And that really frustrated me.

“I’m not one for following instructions well - I just wanted to be a little bit more free.”

You don’t have to be ‘good at art’

One of the biggest barriers Kayleigh encounters is the belief, particularly among adults, that creativity belongs to other people. People tell her they aren’t artistic. They can’t draw. They don’t have a creative bone in their body.

Her answer is simple. “Can you pick up a pencil? Can you pick up a pen? Can you pick up a paintbrush? Yes? Well, you’re an artist then. You can create.”

For Kayleigh, art does not have to be technically perfect, realistic or ready to hang in a gallery. “I make all the children I work with aware that their work doesn’t have to be gallery ready. We’re not getting ready to display work in the Tate. We are having fun. And as long as there’s that element of fun there, then that’s all that really matters.”

She remembers once giving a reluctant young person a handful of wax crayons and a large sheet of paper.

“I told them to pick up the crayons all in one go and scribble. They loved doing it and looked at me as if I was mad.

“I said, ‘You’ve just created a piece of art.’

“They said, ‘But it doesn’t look like anything.’

“It doesn’t have to. Why does it have to look like something?”

That attitude runs through Kayleigh’s own work too.

“I love abstract art. I love experimenting. I love art journaling. I just love being playful.

“Some people do want to learn how to create a perfect portrait, and that’s perfectly okay, but that’s not what I’m all about.”

She even has a slightly unusual enemy in the art room.

“I hate rubbers. I don’t like them!”

Instead, she encourages people to work with the marks they make rather than automatically erasing anything that doesn’t turn out exactly as intended.

Leaving everything at the door

So what should somebody expect if they book a Colourful Horizons workshop?

“The freedom to be experimental and to play and have fun and to just leave everything at the door when you walk in.

“I like to feel that everybody comes in just for the art. And then when they leave, they feel relaxed and ready to take the world on.”

Recently, a woman arrived at one of Kayleigh’s art journaling sessions in Ivybridge after an extremely stressful morning.

“She was quite tense. We did art journaling and by the end of it she said, ‘I really needed that. I just needed to switch my brain off and focus on what was in front of me and not think.’

“And that’s all I can ask for really.”

That sense of connection is increasingly important too.

Kayleigh has collaborated with a growing network of creative people and organisations, including Stitch & Splodge and EM-MAgination.

For somebody who spent years surrounded by fellow teachers, running a business alone could easily have become isolating.

Instead, collaboration has given her a new community.

“The importance of supporting other small businesses is huge. When I was a teacher, I was surrounded by people all the time and colleagues, and I don’t have that anymore.

“Actually working with these women, because it has been women primarily, gives me that sense of need and takes away that loneliness that I was worried about in the job.

“We’ve got to stick together. Everything is so much more powerful when there’s more than one of you. Everybody has their own skillset and their own ideas, and putting them together is just the best thing that we can do.”

Sometimes those connections have happened in unlikely places.

Kayleigh had been speaking to Louise from Stitch & Splodge on social media before the pair unexpectedly found themselves working supply at the same school.

“We were both in a staff room just chatting away and I remember going, ‘Are you Stitch & Splodge?’

“She went, ‘Yes, who are you?’

“It was really fun. I feel like I’ve known them for a very long time and feel truly blessed to work at her new venue on Devonport Road each week – I feel like I have colleagues now.”

Making creativity accessible

Kayleigh is also passionate about ensuring that creative opportunities aren't restricted to families who can afford to pay for them.

She has been involved with Plymouth’s Fit and Fed programme alongside EM-MAgination, delivering activities for children and families during the school holidays.

“Just because parents can’t afford something doesn’t mean their children should miss out, because that time for the child is probably just as important as the parent having that little break.

“We have lots of different children come to us with Fit and Fed, lots of different needs and lots of different backgrounds, and I can safely say that they all enjoy attending these sessions.

“Every child has equal rights no matter what their history is, or what money they have.”

From paint brushes to boardrooms

And children aren't the only ones being encouraged to loosen up.

Colourful Horizons also takes creative sessions into workplaces, offering businesses an alternative to more traditional team-building activities.

Kayleigh has run workshops with organisations including Blossoming Minds in Saltash, Ashfords Solicitors and City College Plymouth, where she has worked alongside Stitch & Splodge with international students.

The workplace sessions can lead to conversations between colleagues who may rarely cross paths during their normal working days.

“You hear the conversations and the laughter in the room and it’s really rewarding to know that I’ve played a part in that.”

One corporate workshop in particular initially left Kayleigh feeling nervous.

“There were lots of solicitors in the room and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, how is this going to go down?’

“Everybody walks in in their suits and ties and I’ve got paint flying around.”

She needn't have worried.

“Some of the men were taking their ties off and rolling up their sleeves. It was wonderful.”

And perhaps, she suggests, there is room for businesses to think differently about what bringing a team together can look like.

“To go out and enjoy a drink or two is kind of the known thing for businesses. Actually, to do something perhaps more rewarding, everybody takes something home with them and they learn a new skill.”

Stitch & Splodge, EM-MAgination, Colourful Horizons

What’s next for Colourful Horizons?

More than two years after taking what felt like an enormous gamble, Kayleigh's diary now looks very different from the one she feared might be half empty when she left teaching.

During the summer she is involved in Fit and Fed sessions, activities with Plymouth Community Homes and work with Friends and Families, as well as running workshops at Endsleigh Garden Centre.

During term time, she runs Arts Award sessions for home-educated children every Thursday and is preparing to introduce a monthly Saturday Arts Award opportunity for children attending school from October.

She also hosts a monthly art journaling workshop in Ivybridge; a relaxed Friday afternoon of guided creativity, coffee and conversation, and is starting an art journaling session at Stitch and Splodge, as well as bringing back a mum-and-baby session.

That latter project is particularly personal.

“When I had my first born (I now have two children), I really struggled after having him. I had a really close network of friends and they spotted that I wasn’t coping, so I did something about it with their help and my families.

“But everything was very orientated around the baby, which of course it will be, but I found that quite challenging...it felt like I was on a rollercoaster of emotions and I couldn’t get off.

“Actually having something for me that was creative at the time might have been really helpful.”

The sessions offer mums with pre-walking babies a place to meet, have tea, coffee and cake, try an art activity if they want to — or simply spend time with other adults.

There are new creative challenges on the horizon too, including conversations about a mural and a mosaic project at a primary school.

But Kayleigh isn't dreaming of turning Colourful Horizons into a huge organisation with employees and branches across the region.

For now, bigger isn't necessarily better.

“I’m very blessed that I’m only two and a half years in and things are going so well. I am busy and I didn’t expect it, in honesty. I thought I’d still be doing supply work and worrying about paying the bills more than I do now.

“Some people have said, ‘Would you like to branch out into Cornwall?’ And I really don’t think that’s for me. I don’t think I want that responsibility and to have employees.

“I’m quite happy with me and just working with people. I think that’s enough.”

Perhaps that is fitting for a business that was created partly because Kayleigh wanted to reclaim some freedom in her own life.

And if you are one of those people still insisting you aren't creative, she has one final challenge.

“Grab a friend and be brave and pick up a pencil, or preferably a colouring pencil because that’s a bit more exciting, and just scribble. Draw circles. Draw lines. Just do something to break that barrier.

“There have been times in my journal when I’ve had a difficult day and I’ve just picked up some colours and scribbled, and I’ve felt so much better for it. Just ten seconds is enough. I share my journals with my children and it’s important they see that art doesn’t have to be perfect.

“You don’t have to be a painter or draw portraits or landscapes to be an artist.

“You just need to be brave and enjoy the process.”