Treat yourself and your career to an immersive retreat, and let this city’s transformation reinvigorate your own creative powers.
21st-23rd August 2026.
Inking Abroad hosts 3-day creative adventures in Berlin for facilitators, consultants, and coaches ready to break free from creative ruts, and use visuals for more impact at work.
The next retreat is on 21, 22 and 23 August 2026. The theme is transforming your walls to bridges, looking through the lenses of Berlin’s history, its street art, and its lively culture.
Break through creative blocks and self-doubt to show up with more confidence in your visual work.
Fill your creative tanks with a mix of walking, urban sketching, museums, dining and street art, to fuel your work long after you return home.
Boost your visual storytelling skills, and find renewed creative energy and fresh approaches to your visual communication.
Find a supportive community of like-minded professionals who’ll inspire and encourage your creative growth.
The best way to change up your outlook is to change up your environment. This is for you if...
Axelle is a highly-renowned graphic recorder at Visual Harvesting, who has transformed hundreds of speakers’ words into attractive thoughtful visual summaries at conferences and gatherings all over the world, for over 10 years. She is also an in-demand trainer, leadership coach and speaker.
Her mission is to enable anyone in the world to convey a message with a drawing, and to help those drawings gain power in every organization, to do business and innovate more successfully. This passion fuels incredible amounts of creativity. Axelle is the author of Start to Draw.
Ben is well-known for his strategic facilitation, business illustration, training, and graphic recording. As a designer for over 25 years, he learned the importance of always sketching his ideas, as well as helping others to bring their ideas to life visually, to create products and services that are more usable, useful and enjoyable.
As an independent consultant at Bright Pilots, he enjoys helping teams of all kinds find and solve problems better, think and communicate together better, and ship faster. He is also the author of Presto Sketching, as well as Draw in 4 and 50 Remote-Friendly Icebreakers.
“What made this retreat truly unforgettable was not only the city and its art, but the international group of facilitators we were part of, coming together from Denmark, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands and Australia. We left Florence with fresh perspectives, new friendships, and a deepened passion for our craft as graphic facilitators and visual note-takers.”
Robert De Groot, Visual Strategist
“Since I came home I can't stop raving about the experience. The art (both street art and classical art) worked wonders. Big kudos to the organisers for a great location, a great venue, excellent organisation (skipping the line to get into the Galleria), selection of restaurants, etc. But also the group of participants was very supportive of each other, no matter the level of experience of the other participants. I will not quickly forget this retreat!”
Gert Van den Bergh, Consultant
“This retreat is one of the best investments I have made into my creative career! The way Ben and Axelle guided us through an inspirational learning journey was admirable. And meeting other creative people from all around the world who not depending on experience level all struggle with the same things was no less than AMAZING! I developed a whole new character style in just 3 days! Just WOW. I am ready for the next retreat, wherever it might be.”
Susanne Krogh-Hansen, Lead Digital Designer
“For me, this was a safe learning environment where I was challenged to push beyond my comfort zone for growth. All of this against a mesmerizing backdrop with superb food in a magical setting.”
Rudy Begas, Communication Trainer
Here’s what’s included in the price of the retreat:
Earlybird discounted price: €1,250 (19 days left)
Standard price: €1,450
This intimate retreat is designed for a small group to ensure personalised guidance and deep creative growth, so we cap the number of people to 15.
Register now, or sign up to our newsletter to find out when to register for the next scheduled retreat.
Next retreat: Friday 21 August - Sunday 23 August 2026
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Think of this as a 3-day creative leadership lab for business storytellers. It’s not a holiday (although Florence is fun and beautiful), and it’s definitely not typical training. It’s an immersive experience designed to help you boost your creative confidence, and then use that in your communications at work (e.g. meetings, flipcharts, presentations, whiteboards) for greater impact and greater competitive edge.
Yes it is, since this qualifies as professional development.
No, you don’t need to be able to draw. You just need to be curious and open to trying. Our participants have been anywhere from complete beginners (e.g. a business manager who wanted to use whiteboards better in her meetings), to seasoned veterans (e.g. a long-time graphic recorder), and without doubt all have been equally satisfied. We’ve even had complete beginners develop new visual styles in 3 days. It’s about developing confidence, not attaining perfection.
Absolutely. Even experienced illustrators and visual practitioners told us that this retreat transformed their approach to visual storytelling, and renewed their passion for the craft.
Our interactive workshop-style training uses a structure of visual storytelling — transforming complex and vague information into compelling and memorable visual narratives — to help you strengthen your own purpose and story, so that you’re more creatively confident to communicate other information. We cover the following themes:
We also tailor this to the city we’re in. It’s important to us that we let the city tell us its own story — through its history, museums, street art and local knowledge — and learn from that
We stick to English. Our participants typically come from a wide range of countries, so we find it best to keep everything ‘official’ in English, and then you can feel free to have any informal conversations with others in your own language. Axelle speaks Flemish, English, French, Italian and Spanish. Ben... let’s just say that he’ll stick to English!
The best thing to do is sign up to our newsletter (above). That way, you’ll be the first to know when we announce new dates for our retreats.
We do creative retreats in Florence, Berlin, and we’re putting one together for the Catalonia region, taking in Barcelona, Figueres and Cataques. We also have some other locations in mind... If you’d like to be the first to know, sign up to our newsletter.
