However hard you run at the year, it is impossible to ignore the change of pace that comes hand in hand with the summer. For parents, the seemingly endless summer means a rise in temperatures comes hand in hand with an increase in stress levels. While the holiday season means any given request is likely to be greeted with an omnipresent automated out-of-office response.

Yet while maintaining pace might feel frustrating in the summer months, there is equally an argument that anything that punctures the ‘always on’ marketing hamster wheel must be a good thing. While the long summer evenings bring with them the opportunity to make the best of the 5 to 9. With making the most of the summer slowdown in mind, we asked industry leaders to share where they are finding their creative inspiration this summer. 

I found the music in The Bear season 4 made me appreciate how much new music I hear through film, TV and advertising now I'm post-going out. If you couldn't get Oasis or Glasto tickets, a good soundtrack is a brilliant thing (TikTok is also good). If The Bear's major chords did the emotional priming, reading Monkey Grip by Helen Garner did the harder job of getting me to reconsider a lot of previous certainties in the way the only really tightly written fiction can do. Having had my thoughts provoked, I am then humbled on a daily basis by the unassailable lateral logic of my two small daughters' view on the world (no risk of forming a self indulgent position on the world) before I organise my thoughts on all the above on my bike on my commute.

This summer, I signed up for an improv class. Not because I dream of becoming an actor, but because I wanted to experience life on the other side of the scripts we write.

Paradoxically, it made me realise that not even the most brilliantly crafted scene can beat the power of an involuntarily witty, unscripted moment… Born on the spot by strangers who’ve just met, with no script, no props, no set, no blockers.

The only rule? Listen to your scene partners, and say ‘YES, and…’ instead of ‘No, but…’ even if the idea feels absurd.

And just like that, I witnessed the birth of the most unexpectedly simple, yet watchable scenes. From two castaways meticulously trying to light their last match after three failed attempts… To a pistachio ice cream that makes people’s tongues spin uncontrollably for no reason… To beachgoers digging a hole in the sand, wildly convinced they could reach China.

These throwaway moments stuck with me more than most polished scripts. That surprise, that immediacy was the real payoff.

It made me wonder how much better our scripts could be if we listened more to our own ‘YES, ands’ and less to our ‘No, buts.’

1. Magazines. Always magazines. The weirder the better — Gardeners’ World, The Lady, Gentleman’s Journal, Tabletop Gaming. The sort of thing your great aunt or eccentric neighbour hoards under the bed. I make a pilgrimage to Charlotte Street News and keep a stack on my desk. It’s a fast track into subcultures and the people who quietly run them. Plus: art direction ideas, cultural themes, phrases that end up in briefs. Editorial’s a masterclass in relevance, hook, and actual voice. Finesse, on paper.
2. Summer blockbusters – especially the kids’ ones. Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull once said films should be simple enough for adults and complicated enough for children. Agreed. Children’s films often make absolutely no sense, which is exactly why they’re brilliant. I try to see everything, even the ones clearly aimed at sugar-high nine-year-olds. The Minecraft movie? Unhinged.
3. I RELIGIOUSLY listen to Parenting Hell. Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombe on the absurdity of raising children (which I don’t have). Especially excellent in summer, when their kids have lost the plot.
4. And finally: supermarkets. Yes, supermarkets. Not just for snacks – for sociology. It’s like live theatre, but with baskets. The overheard conversations in the aisles are gold. 

London has been both hot and wet. So I’ve been cooling down and drying off in air-conditioned galleries and museums. Ed Atkins at Tate Britain, which closes at the end of the month, has been a particular highlight. His computer-generated films and animations are uncanny, non-linear and hugely disturbing but endure in asking some of the most real questions about what it is to be a messy human. From a (relatively) universal quest to appreciate our parents before we lose them, to reconciling with how we perform various skins and characters as we shift through the different ‘stages’ in our lives. 

The ad industry is so obsessed with AI and its capabilities, but we have to also look beyond what advertisers are doing - to what other creatives, like fine artists, are up to as well. They aren't all as cynical as you might think, and many are exploring the limits of rapidly advancing technologies in ways that those seeking to use it to trim margins and make shortcuts, won’t. There’s nothing gimmicky about Atkins’ work. 

Big museum shows at Tate Britain are one thing, but there's also been plenty of opportunity to dip in and out of degree shows at LCC, Goldsmiths and Central Saint Martins, to name a few. Although be warned, not all university buildings are equally air-conditioned! I find that identifying what graduates are interested in is a helpful guide as to what ideas are gripping the next gen at large. Be that digital-fatigue, community dependence, or climate meltdown (or all of the above).

I particularly enjoyed a film piece ‘Red Shoes’ at Goldsmiths, by graduate Coco Guo, which took found footage from a genuine geographical phenomenon from 2001, when the region of Kerala in South India received weeks of bright red ‘blood’ rain as a result of migratory dust particles. Cut against bleached red macro clips of all sorts of creatures mating within an immersive soundscape – I could start to believe how it really might all end this way, after the billionaires abandon us to colonise Mars.  

Despite our long summer days, it turns out that inspiration has struck me most when in a dark room in front of a furiously whirring projector.