‘It’s the ‘spaces between’ that matter most’

What are you doing to exercise your creative muscles this summer? This summer, BITE is asking the industry how we can make space for adventures in curiosity and creativity. Jemima Garthwaite, Founder and CEO of This Here, is finding inspiration in the unpredictability of life.

On paper, things are looking curiously good this summer. This Here is thriving, our work is the best we've made, and the team is flying. But outside of being the CEO of This Here, this last year or so has been one of the hardest I’ve encountered. I’ve jumped more hurdles than I'd have chosen, some of which I've written about on LinkedIn, fertility among them, alongside loss and well - just life doing its best at throwing life at you. None of it is a story for this piece. But I came out the other side of it recently, and it felt like surfacing after a long time underwater.

In a piece of timing I couldn't have planned, the moment is punctuated by being between homes, so this summer my five-year-old and I will be bouncing between house-sits, spare rooms, and hilariously, a tent pitched in the garden of our new home, which will mainly be an interactive installation of builders and dust. There will also be a brief holiday somewhere even sunnier than London, if such a place exists.

So we'll be living out of a backpack for a few months, and I'm quietly hoping that it’ll take me back to a feeling I last had in my early twenties: a careless abandon of the long summers between school and uni, uni and work. Stories told on endless train journeys. The total normality of bunking up in a twenty-bed hostel dorm. Friends-for-life made over a deck of cards. Arriving in a new town with no plan at all. Book swaps with messages left in the margins for whoever picks them up next. Sandals worn till paper-thin. Scrapbooks filled with sketches of memories and sweet little thoughts for no one in particular.

It was a selfish time, on reflection. But it was constantly and effortlessly full of inspiration. And that's the thing I now struggle to let in. At This Here, an agency that runs on a currency of ideas and fresh inspiration, it’s unequivocally the most essential part of my job, but the first thing to get squeezed out.

I've come to realise it's the ‘spaces between’ that matter most. The travelling, the waiting. We've learned to fill every one of those gaps with podcasts in the ears and scheduled activities, a constant chatter that feels productive but mostly isn't. So, uncertainty does something useful instead. It shakes the life admin and the burden of the inbox out of your head, and leaves room for something else to wander in.

This summer, my adventure in curiosity is to embrace instability, and relish the interruption it makes to a routine that I think is dulling my senses. To guide this, and in a vain effort to impart some wisdom here, I’ve set out not some rules to live by, but a few aids to keep me on track.

A scrapbook to share with my son. I'll sketch, he'll colour, and together we'll design gadgets that he'll label. Accidentally, he'll practise his handwriting and I'll remember how to draw.

A couple of paperbacks and a pencil. Notes in the margins before swapping them along the way, little messages for whoever picks them up next.

A deck of cards. The original excuse to make a new friend or two.

One small duffle backpack. A conscious decision to travel light, wearing the same few outfits and a pair of sandals day after day. With any luck they'll be paper-thin by September. Perhaps that's my KPI for a creative summer. (Oh god, did I just say that?

A few ziplock bags. For the seeds we'll shake out of plants collected on our adventures, ready to pot up in our new garden. Souvenirs of a sort.

A camera. Not the phone in my pocket, but my dad's old Leica over my shoulder. Shooting in black and white has a knack of slowing you down. You stop collecting images and start noticing more.

Postcards. I recently lost a distant uncle who I only ever knew through typewritten correspondence, and it reminded me of the huge weight pen and paper can hold. A sentence written down and posted travels further than anything I've ever put ‘on the gram’.

And one anti-item. My Apple Watch is coming off for the summer. In its place, one of my dad's old utility watch, scratched and worn out. It just needs a fresh battery. Me too. Very much hoping the summer works its magic.

So catch me in September. I'll be the one in the paper-thin sandals, fresh battery fitted, finally home, and very much inspired.