This is where Clearspace came from — and why it works the way it does.
The name comes from a Spanish word — claro. Clear. Luminous. Open. The feeling of space to think, to feel, to be. Room to find out who you are without the noise of expectation pressing in.
Clearspace Learning exists to create that feeling — for every young person who walks through the door. Not a space to stay in forever. A clearing where you find your bearings, find yourself, and walk on stronger than when you arrived.
It started in a small Scottish town in the 1970s, where I learned early that some kids fit the world they're handed and some don't — and that the ones who don't are often the most interesting people in the room. That stuck with me.
Years later I found myself working in Bosnian refugee camps, then at an arts festival in Tuzla — a city still living inside the aftermath of war. We built a community installation called Stairway to the Stars. I met young people who had lost almost everything and still had things to make and say and share.
That's when I understood something I've never been able to unknow: the impulse to create — to make something real and put it into the world — survives almost anything. And if you can find that impulse in a young person and give it the right conditions, something extraordinary becomes possible.
That's been the thread ever since. Across PRUs and special schools, residential settings and kitchen tables, EOTAS placements and arts events.
"One evening at an arts showcase in South London, a boy who had been abandoned twice over stood up in front of an audience and read his poem."
He had a stutter — not just a speech thing, a whole-body brace against being heard. We didn't work on the stutter. We worked on what he had to say.
His voice held. When he finished, his grandmother and aunt came toward him. All three of them ended up in each other's arms.
Nobody fixes anybody. You create the space. You find what's there. You build from it.
A career that has never gone in a straight line — and has been completely consistent the whole time.
Engineering & Design
BEng Mechanical Engineering. Biomechanics research at Strathclyde. CNC machine design and build from scratch. Automation systems at British International Cables. Product design, eco furniture, mask kit design and manufacture. Patent involvement in stretchable mirrors for space laser applications.
Art, Design & Culture
Practicing fine artist and self-taught graphic designer. Web design and creative direction through the dot-com era. Art History and Drawing & Painting courses in Prague. Artist in Exile — founding member, building a network for refugee artists. Bosnian arts festival. Community installation in post-war Sarajevo.
Presence & Practice
20+ years Tai Chi — Chen family lineage (Chen Bing), teaching and practice: hand forms, push hands, broadsword. 20+ years applied and performing improv. Stand-up comedy and fringe shows. These aren't peripheral — they are the pedagogy. Presence, listening, co-regulation, the willingness to follow where the room goes.
Teaching & SEND
QTS qualified (Design & Technology). DSL Level 3 certified. 20+ years across PRUs, special schools, MLD, EOTAS, residential settings, mainstream inclusion and private 1:1. Built multiple curriculums from scratch. CPD trainer in education and retail. 1:1 maths and physics tuition to university level.
Computing & Technology
Masters in Computing. Robotics research at the Turing Institute in Glasgow. Robot interface design. Full-stack web design through the dot-com era. Digital tools, coding, BBC micro:bit, Lego Spike Prime, Tinkercad, CAD, 3D printing — all live practice, not theoretical knowledge.
Clearspace Learning
Founded 2024. Bringing everything together — engineering, art, computing, improv, tai chi, 20 years of SEND practice — into a single, integrated specialist offer. For young people who need something genuinely different. And for the professionals and families who support them.
The engineering teaches systems thinking — how components relate, where force needs to go, why things fail and how to rebuild. The tai chi teaches presence — how to be in a room, how to listen with the whole body, how to wait without filling the silence. The improv teaches everything else — yes-and, follow the energy, trust what's emerging, don't plan your way out of the moment.
These aren't separate things brought into the classroom as techniques. They are a single integrated practice that has been developing for thirty years. The children feel it. They can't always name it — but they feel the difference between someone performing expertise and someone who has actually inhabited it.
"Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it." — Michelangelo
That's the work. Not building something new. Finding what was always there — and creating the conditions where it can emerge.
Clearspace is led by Stuart Knox — and where a young person needs breadth beyond a single specialism, we work with a carefully chosen network of trusted practitioners.
This isn't a limitation — it's a deliberate model. The best specialist provision works like this: a surgeon doesn't employ the anaesthetist full-time. An architect doesn't have every tradesperson on payroll. They build trusted networks and deploy them around the needs of each project.
Every programme is built around the young person — not around what's available on a roster.
Subject specialists
English, Maths, MFL, Arts — curriculum breadth across the full age and qualification range.
Therapeutic practitioners
OT, speech and language, counselling — the relational support that sits alongside learning.
SEN consultants
EHCP advice, advocacy, statutory navigation — working alongside families and authorities.
Creative practitioners
Arts, music, drama, film — project enrichment and expression across disciplines.
"Stuart is able to take everything in his stride and is extremely adaptable. Nothing throws him — whether that's a change in my son's behaviour or his interests."
— PARENT · EOTAS FAMILY · OXFORDSHIREDedicated Safeguarding Lead
DSL Level 3
Enhanced DBS Disclosure
Update Service
Comprehensive Insurance
Public Liability & Professional Indemnity
Professional Risk Management
Specific & Activity-Based Risk Assessments
Tell us about your young person. That's always where we start.
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