Episode two is about DOING THE WORK y’all! And that means slowing down, decentring yourself, centring the community, challenging the status quo and constantly reflecting on your organisational structures and being open to your blind spots. This conversation flits between Watershed Centre for the Ceramic Arts in northern rural Maine and Black Hound Clay Studios in Philadelphia. And whilst the concerns of rural v city are obviously specific and different, the ideas that underpin how to run these spaces are not so. They are both heavily invested in building community through education, providing ..read more

I realise now that episode 1 of season 1 also started with the institution of ‘school’ in some ways , but oh well, at least I’m consistent!  Ep 1 is talking about craft schools, mainly, but also what it means to have a craft education. What’s it for? What has it missed out? What does it promise?  In the US, many of craft schools were made possible through the GI Bill, a state fund from the mid 40s that supported initiatives and education for returning veterans. Seems kind of unlikely in our current climate, but much of this government money was funnelled into craft and art education ..read more

Episode 4 is about positioning this work within traditional practices and rooting it in grassroot, activist, community organising. Speaking to Les Monarcas de Barro (the butterflies of mud), this amazing organisation talks to me about immigration, South American pueblo ceramic traditions, and the disconnect between ideas of land and earth, and our Western understanding of ceramics.  So many of our studios and clay practices have been built around handbuilding 1, handbuilding 2, with a focus on skill devoid of context, spirituality or even general connection to each other. How many of us h ..read more

VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN! Let’s end with a bit of hope and imagine together what we might build together. If we start to shift our creativity towards communities and away from capitalism. It’s a long road ahead, but we’ve got to start somewhere!   In this final episode, we talk about the importance of spaces to gather and talk about ideas. There’s lots wrong with universities, but they did give us a space to get together and talk about things that we cared about, deeply, over time. How many other places in society can we do this? Clay studios, that’s where!  Let’s face it, zoom isn’t ..read more

I'll let this one stand on its own - a little something from my current phd, to end on an intent for the future.   To You and Clay and Beyond ..read more

It’s finally here! Welcome to the second season of Clay Commons! I’ve gone for something a bit different with this one so let me explain a bit.  I maaaaay have mentioned the incredible few months in Summer 2022 that I spent travelling up and down the East Coast of North America, visiting craft schools and ceramic studios. Why? Because the idea for the Clay Commons came out of the rising number of community clay studios in the UK, and, if you listen to Ep2, Season 1, you’ll hear about how American models have massively influenced this. So, I wanted to go to source and see what these organi ..read more

In conclusion to the first season of Clay Commons, we hear again from some of the contributors of other episodes, as well as a few new voices. We’ve heard a lot about the issues facing individuals and the ceramics discipline at large, and in this episode we go a bit deeper into potential solutions and how this work can feed out into the wider society and change our education systems. Clay Commons has just scratched the surface of what community ceramic spaces and artists have to offer the education space and other sectors such as care and health, immigration, human rights and even law and pol ..read more

We’re already over a year post the murder of George Floyd, and the global reckoning this atrocious act sparked, but really, how much can we say has changed? This podcast has taken a while to come out, so we’re not as up-to-date as we could be, however, the issues we speak about in this episode are long standing, and universal. Ceramics, especially in the UK, is often the territory of the white middle classes, and we have a long way to go in the discipline before we can call ourselves an equitable, access-for-all type of field. The UK has the added excuse of that good old ‘we’re not racist’ rep ..read more

In Episode 4, we’re meeting some amazing people who are literally transforming lives in very real and tangible ways. It might seem ludicrous to think that a previously incarcerated person, or an undocumented immigrant, or someone forced to use foodbanks to feed their children might have any use for clay, but we meet people in this episode who prove otherwise. Going back to America, we hear from two incredible projects, The People’s Pottery Project and Touching Land. The PPP is a pottery studio run by and for previously incarcerated women, trans and non-binary people; one of their founders, Ilk ..read more

Episode 3 is out and we’re delving deeper into the role of the artist in society, and specifically clay as a tool to support those in mental health crisis, with disability and those effected by dementia. There’s a long history of art therapy and I’m sure plenty of science to back up what we, as artists working with vulnerable communities, witness – that clay and the arts are good for the soul and integral to a wholehearted life. It can even be life saving.  I’m not and do not pretend to be a medical professional or to have any training in social care, and most of the amazing artists I sp ..read more