creative business time with… kirra jamison
Ever wanted to turn a daydream into a reality? Artist Kirra Jamison did just that. Now she runs her own delightful yoga studio, Good Vibes, just five minutes from her house. In this little chat, she told us how she made it all happen.
Created in collaboration with Squarespace
Snaps by Brooke Holm
Sometimes folks daydream – other times folks turns those dreams into a living, breathing reality. Good Vibes yoga studio owner Kirra Jamison belongs to the latter category. In this little chat, she tells us how she went about setting up her studio, and how she liberated her creative life in the process.
Tell us a bit about how you started Good Vibes. I was painting really big canvasses and getting a bad back. A physio told me to try yoga, and I just fell in love with it. I started a daily practice and then did yoga teacher training, but I also wanted to continue my art practice. I’d be lying in savasana, a pose where you're trying to still all the crazy thoughts in your mind, and I’d be mentally designing a yoga studio. I wanted a really beautiful, contemporary studio close to my house with all of Melbourne's best teachers in it, so I could practice every day. I opened Good Vibes two years ago.
What inspired you design-wise? The space used to be a candle-making factory, so it was a pretty raw warehouse. I did a seven-month long renovation with the help of my architect friend Leo Dewitte. It’s influenced by Japanese and Scandinavian design. We have lots of plants and it’s a really open, laid-back, inclusive environment. A huge part of the design philosophy was caring for the students and also for the earth, so the flooring is cork, the timber was sourced from sustainable rainforests in Queensland and we have hydronic heating.
How do you juggle being a painter while managing a yoga studio? It’s very hard. I’ve had to make sure I have no art deadlines. For almost 10 years, I was on that cycle of having a show every 12 months. I think it wore me down and was part of the reason I wanted to do something different, use my brain in a different way and create a business that could become my source of income, instead of my art. I wanted to take that pressure off my creativity. Now I just go at my own pace. Good Vibes is five minutes away from my house and my art studio is a further five minutes away, so I ping pong around those three spaces. I usually do one yoga class a day – sometimes three!
How easy was it to bring your business online? Because I’m a really visual person, Squarespace was a good choice because you can have full-screen images. People say, “Your vibe attracts your tribe,” and even though that’s really cheesy, I think it’s true. When you land on our website, you see that Good Vibes is a friendly, open environment where people can feel safe. Having the live schedule integrated into the website is invaluable, too. We have 40 classes a week, so it's important for people to be able to book themselves in. We try to be as paperless as possible, so we have a bunch of iPads at reception, and if anyone wants to buy a gift voucher or sign up for membership, we pull up the website and fill in their details. I have the studio assistants who also log into the website and change things whenever it’s needed. It's super-easy.
What’s your big dream for Good Vibes? I want it to be a sanctuary where people can step outside of the craziness. It’s a space where you don’t use any technology, where you’re not scrolling, so it offers time to connect with yourself. In a very organic way, a community builds. You hear 32 people breathing and moving in unison and it’s beautiful. Yoga changed my life in such a positive way, so it’s awesome to be able to facilitate that with other people – and get free yoga five minutes from my house.
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