Teach Inspire Create Conference 2025: André Anderson

We’re thrilled to announce that André Anderson will be joining us as a keynote speaker at this year’s Teach Inspire Create conference in November!

André is a multi-disciplinary artist, publisher, poet, designer and founder of Freedom & Balance – a platform he describes as an “art college for the artist in everyone”. His work combines creativity and education along with community empowerment to help people – especially underrepresented voices – see the power in their stories.

One of his most inspiring projects is Authors of the Estate, a book created with 22 residents from the Chalkhill Estate in north-west London. Together, they turned council houses into publishing houses, proving that storytelling can facilitate change. The book sold out in a week and has been praised by everyone from Stormzy’s Merky Books to schools of architecture.

As ‘Headmaster’ of Freedom & Balance, André is on a mission to rewrite the language and tools of education, encouraging people to see self-expression as an act of resistance. His approach interlinks perfectly with the essence of our Teach Inspire Create conference, which is all about sparking inspiration across our teaching centres.

André’s keynote promises to be a thought-provoking look into the power of storytelling, giving our educators an insight into how they can unlock creative potential in every learner.

We spoke with him ahead of the conference to get a glimpse into some of the topics he will be covering:

What inspired you to start Freedom & Balance - and how does that idea of ‘freedom’ apply to education?

I originally started my journey as an artist. I loved writing, designing, and publishing my own books. That said, as much as I enjoyed the process of discovering and making something new, I found the creative process to do those things incredibly lonely. You’d spend a year in solitude, make something new, only to spend a few days or weeks sharing it with others. That way of working was short-lived and unsatisfactory for me. I did not just want to share the end results of my creative process, I wanted to share the entire journey, from beginning to end.

I realised the best way to do that was to start my own art college. Starting an art college was my way of democratising my creative process, my wildest imaginations, and open-sourcing it for my community to remix and enjoy.

That became a freeing experience, not just for our students, but for myself, the curriculum designer. Instead of asking myself “what should I teach?” I would ask “what’s the most exciting thing we can explore together?”. That question creates a learning environment that nurtures that most creative, ambitious, and freest version of ourselves.

Freedom and Balance pushes forward the idea that there is an artist in everyone - how do you think creativity and play can help teachers connect with and inspire students?

We can all pretty much agree, at least when it comes to children, that play is vital for learning development and maturity. We institute ‘play time’ in primary schools for a real reason. Without it, our children’s social, emotional, cognitive and physical abilities never reach its full potential.

Knowing the benefits of play, my question is: Why do we stop playing? At what age is play no longer necessary for maturity? If play IS always necessary, where do grown adults go to play? How do we mature in our play styles?

I believe the best learning environments are those that teach us how to play and stay playful. That’s what Freedom & Balance is for, to host space that allows us to mature our sense of play throughout our lives, not just during childhood.

How do you see projects like Authors of the Estate influencing the way education could look into the future - especially for young people in areas that are often overlooked?

We started Authors of the Estate with a simple question “How do you turn a council house into a publishing house?”. How do you transform a community that normally has negative stories told about them, into confident authors and publishers of their own story? How do you do it in a way that feels native to the community, and not an alien concept forced upon them?

We took these questions seriously. We had to research what constitutes a publishing-house, then retranslate those elements to our community, not for them to make something that is ‘good enough’ for the industry, but to build something that can possibly transcend current industry practices.

As an educator, I am not interested in preparing students for the current workplace. I am more interested in preparing them to be leaders of the next one. I believe young people who come from low-income estates, when given the right chance, have something original to show the world.

You’ve worked with everyone from Nintendo to Tate, but you still manage to stay connected to grassroots communities. How do you balance these two worlds?

My creative aspirations are not really pointed towards the ‘industry’, but within grassroots communities. That said, I love the conversation these two worlds can have with each other.

I love discovering the practices of the industry, and seeing how grassroots communities can reinterpret it, and make it their own, to make new discoveries. Whenever I work with grassroots communities, we discover things that the industry hasn’t yet. The more time I spend in the industry, I find language that grassroots organisations can learn and reinterpret for themselves.

At the Teach Inspire Create conference, you will be speaking to educators from all over. What’s one thing you hope they take away from your session?

I want us to understand that play is not just a phase in life, but a way you can approach your entire life.

I would love us to see the true creative potential within the classrooms we lead.

What could be discovered when we no longer ‘teach’ our students but use our richest, most imaginative selves to co-create with our students?

I want to explore that idea with you all…

Stay tuned for more from André in the lead-up to the event.

Bookings for this year’s Teach Inspire Create conference are now open; make sure to book your free slot while tickets last!