Paint & Sip? ...A Brushstroke Too Far 🖌️

Last week, a journalist in The Independent declared paint and sip events "the worst thing to happen to our social lives."

Yep... The WORST THING!

Not 2026, being the wettest year on record so far. Not the cost of living crisis. Not the looming threat of WW3. Paint and Sip events. That's the real villain.

I think this is a (brush)stroke too far...

Not because I'm biased, though yes, obviously - but because I watch what happens in our workshops every single week.

You will find people creating things with their hands for the first time since childhood, connecting with other humans and switching off the part of their brain that says “I can’t paint” or "I’m not creative".

And yes, you will find wine *shocker alert* responsible adults are offered a glass to sip on.

The creative juice is an optional extra that says… Leave your inner critic at the door. There are no scoreboards. There is no judgment. Pick up the brush!

The real worst thing?

Telling people that "joy" has to be earned, that creativity has to be validated, that painting is only worth doing if the result is impressive.

Business leaders love to quantify everything. Performance reviews. Revenue targets. ROI on everything that moves... We are constantly being tracked and optimised.

Peter Drucker famously said: "What gets measured gets managed." 

But some of the most important things that happen inside a business cannot be measured - like workplace culture or brand loyalty. ART doesn't need to justify itself with a metric. That's not a bug to be fixed. That's the main feature.

With employees increasingly anxious about AI and automation, ART gives that stressed team member a moment to un-wined (ahem, pun intended) for the first time in months. It sparks the conversation between two colleagues who've never actually talked before. It shows how Dave from accounts is secretly Picasso at painting portraits. Sure, none of this fits neatly into a KPI dashboard. And yet its impact is immeasurable.

Now, to be fair to the ART-icle. There are bad paint-and-sip events out there with teachers who don't… teach and venues more interested in the bar tab than the brushes. The industry isn't perfect. That's reality!

But, you know what else has varied experiences? Restaurants. Yoga classes. The cinema. Basically every single social activity humans have ever invented.

The answer to "I had a terrible time" is not "paint and sip is the worst thing to happen to our social lives." It's simple, your event was bad. Find a better one.

If you're looking… It's called ART SIPPERS.

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