These are relaxed and friendly sessions open to all, whether a seasoned potter or an absolute beginner. Come along, de-stress and lose yourself experiencing the wonders of clay!
These workshops are a great way to spend quality time with friends and family, great for meeting new people too.
Follow the link to the right for bookings or read on for a bit more information:
For beginners or those with just a little experience:
As a beginner you will have dedicated time with staff over a rolling four week programme where we will introduce you to a range of handbuilding techniques and practices covering all the fundamentals for working with clay, from thumb-pots and coil building to tile making, slab construction and press moulding along with basic decorating techniques and simple glazing. You might already have a strong idea about something you want to make and we will discuss this with you and help you to achieve it once you have mastered the basics. Every attendee new to the workshop has a Health and Safety briefing and an introduction to workshop practices before starting and then you are all set to go.
Improvers workshops:
Once you've got the basic skills under your belt and you're ready to explore it's time to move on to our Improvers sessions where you have access to all the equipment in the pottery and the full expertise of our highly skilled and experienced tutors.
Open access:
For those with experience, whether it's learned here at the workshop or elsewhere, once we are assured of your skills, and we have a short training checklist to establish this, you'll be free to book on any of the open access sessions. These are times when a tutored workshop is running in the pottery and there is studio space available for others to come along and work independently. Please note, there is no tutor support at these times.
Throwing: Throwing is a particular skill with separately booked sessions available as single one-off tasters and advanced sessions for those wishing to build their skills, for example, making handles, spouts and lids. Longer two and three day blocks where you can see your work through from beginning to end - throwing, turning and slip decorating also run periodically.
Equipment and the space: The pottery is a large, open plan space where we have fourteen bench based workstations, six electric pottery wheels, a slab-rolling machine for preparing large slabs of clay, an extruder for coils and hollow forms, a large selection of press moulds and a reclaim and clay prep area with pugmill for recycling clay. There is a work storage area with a kiln room adjacent to it with three electric kilns of varying sizes.