Finding Balance: The emPOWER Breakfast at Focus 2025

Exploring how awareness, energy and wellbeing can power sustainable creativity

The emPOWER Breakfast is proud to be part of FOCUS: Meet the Makers 2025, the annual showcase for the creative screen industries. The event takes place at The Business Design Centre in Islington on Tuesday 9th December, bringing together over 200 speakers and more than 60 sessions across film, TV, advertising, games and XR.

For this special edition, emPOWER founder Athene Parker will be joined by Lou Allen, Managing Director at Factory Studios, and Maxine Hose, Head of Production at Grey Advertising UK, for an open and deeply personal conversation about energy, resilience and the journey to recovery after burnout.

Both Lou and Maxine will reflect on how peri-menopause related energy shifts led them to re-evaluate their relationship with work, wellbeing and leadership. Together, they will explore what it means to sustain creativity and performance while navigating the physical and emotional realities of midlife.

The session sits within emPOWER’s ongoing theme of ‘Peace Down to Scale Up’, an invitation to pause, reset and channel energy where it truly matters. The discussion will highlight how recognising our limits and managing our energy is not a sign of weakness, but an essential skill for longevity and impact in high-pressure creative industries.

To open the session, Bella Clark, former Director at Red Management and now a certified Pranic Therapist, will lead a short grounding meditation to help the audience arrive, breathe and settle into the conversation. Fifteen attendees will also have the opportunity to sit at the back of the room and receive gentle pranic energy from trained therapists, offering a moment of stillness and renewal.

If you would like to reserve one of these fifteen seats, please email athene@theempowerbreakfast.co.uk.

We’ll close the morning with a relaxed networking session, offering time to connect and reflect together. Register here to receive your delegate badge. When you register, please complete all the required fields and, on page two in the membership section, tick the box for The emPOWER Breakfast. You’ll then be pre-approved for a pass. Simply print your delegate badge and bring it with you to the Focus 2025 Expo at The Business Design Centre in Islington.

We are delighted that our room and post-talk networking are being sponsored by our long-standing partners Framestore and Company 3, whose continued support helps make these conversations possible.

FOCUS 2025 promises a vibrant and inspiring programme for anyone working across the creative industries. We are proud to bring The emPOWER Breakfast community to this wider stage, championing honest dialogue, collective wellbeing and the power of human energy in shaping better ways to work and create.