More tickets for terms 2 and 3 will be released on Wednesday 31st October. Check out the booking details below.
We are excited to launch Building The Clay Commons Night Class (online) – a new co-learning, online space set up for people interested in exploring ways to develop different, more emancipatory systems of working within and with the clay studio. The night classes are facilitated by artist and researcher Eva Masterman and features artists, organisers and academics Joon-Lynn Goh, the Portland Inn Project, Jenni Sorkin and Oren Shoesmith.
Accessibility information is at the bottom of this page.
Night classes run for 3 terms (with each term made up of 3, two-hour sessions) and will focus on distinct themes:
Term 1: Ways of Organising
This term kicks off with guest lecturer Joon-Lyn Goh and will explore practices of organising and how we can build social movements through creative practice. We will look at histories of the commons, organising and networking methods, how to collectively build support systems and share resources, and end with how this work can be applied to our own clay practices and education spaces.
Term 2: The Studio
We will explore the clay studio as a space of gathering and teaching – where we can test ways of working together. This term will be introduced by The Portland Inn Project and will explore the studio as a space of embedded, people led change. We will look at collaborative organisational structures, cooperation with public services, alternative economic models and how we might begin to change our leadership practices to best serve and centre our communities.
Term 3: Material Practice
The final term will be framed by the work of Jenni Sorkin, and will offer alternative ceramic values and teaching practices through the lens of gender, artistic labour, and expanded and de-colonised approaches to post-war ceramics. Focusing on what we teach and why, we will ask questions such as: What histories and lived experiences are we including in our lessons and workshops? How does this impact what, how and why we teach? How can these practices embody our shared values and be inclusive of the multiple and diverse identities of our communities?
Dates & Booking
Bookings are made via Eventbrite at the links below and are free to attend. Each term is bookable as a whole through 1 ticket for 3 sessions and you can book for as many terms as you like.
Booking is a on a first come, first serve basis and spaces are limited to allow for dedicated discussion.
All sessions take place from 4pm – 6pm (UK time).
Term 1 – Ways of Organising
16 October – feat Joon-Lynn Goh
30 October – feat Oren Shoesmith
6 November
Book your place on term 1 on Eventbrite
Term 2 – The Studio
13 November – feat Portland Inn Project
27 November – feat Oren Shoesmith
11 December
Book your place on term 2 on Eventbrite
Term 3 – Material Practice
22 January 2025 – feat Jenni Sorkin
5 February – feat Oren Shoesmith
19 February
Book your place on term 3 on Eventbrite
If you are having issues booking through eventbrite please email arts@ssw.org.uk or call the office on 01464 861372.
How the programme will run
This programme is free to attend and whilst we intend to build knowledge and community over the three terms, each will operate individually. You can sign up to as many terms as you like, and we encourage participants to commit to all three sessions of whichever term you choose. You will then form small cohorts each term where we will have time, space and inspiration to imagine and enact alternative ways of working and learning together with clay
Each term will feature a guest speaker who will outline ideas surrounding the term’s focus area. This will be followed by readings and references to engage within and between classes, as well as exercises and invitations to bring practical applications of these theories to the last session for supportive discussion. We will also engage in embodied clay meditations in each term.
About the contributors
Photo credit Christa Holka
Joon-Lynn Goh is a cultural organiser and co-founding director of Migrants in Culture, a migrant-led design agency that resources artists and organisers to build more creative and powerful social movements. Joon-Lynn is a Thirty Percy Changemaker, a GLA Civic Futures Fellow 2021-22 and co-recipient of UNHCR Champion of the Year, Women on the Move Award 2016. She declined a 2019 MBE for Services to Equality for organising a Syrian refugee resettlement programme with Bristol City Council and Citizens UK (2014-2017).
The Portland Inn Project CIC (PIP) is a creative arts organisation with an aim to achieve community cohesion, economic, social and cultural development by involving the community in the development of a pioneering community space, cultural hub and social enterprise. Currently we work from the PIPPIN – a temporary space where we design and deliver a wide ranging programme of activity. Founded by two artists, Anna Francis & Rebecca Davies, in a residential area of Stoke on Trent, working in collaboration with other artists, arts organisations, designers, service providers and residents to improve our area. We advocate for people-led change, and champion the importance of art in leading that change, in cooperation with public services.
PIP is cited as an exemplar project of people led change, in an under-represented part of the city. PIP’s deeply embedded, progressive approach has helped us deliver a collaborative architectural plan and raise significant funding for a pioneering cultural space in the neighbourhood, the first of its kind in the city. Renovation began in October 2023 In 2022 PIP became Arts Council NPO.
Jenni Sorkin is Professor and Chair of History of Art & Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is also Affiliated Faculty in the Departments of Art, Feminist Studies, History and Media Arts and Technology. She writes on the intersections between gender, material culture, and contemporary art, working primarily on women artists and underrepresented media. Her books include Live Form: Women, Ceramics and Community (University of Chicago Press, 2016), Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women Artists, 1947–2016 (Skira, 2016), and Art in California (Thames & Hudson, 2021).
She has contributed scholarly essays to major recent exhibitions and books that seek to reconfigure the received histories of twentieth century art, including Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College (ICA Boston, 2015), Outliers and American Vanguard Art (National Gallery of Art, 2018), Among Others: Blackness at MOMA (MOMA, 2018), Groundswell: Women of Land Art (Nasher, 2023), and the forthcoming Postwar Reader: A Global History, 1945-1965 (Okwui Enwezor and Aytreyee Gupta, eds.) Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Getty Research Institute, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Modern Craft, the University of California Press Editorial Board, and currently serves as Co-Executive Editor of Panorama: The Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art.
Oren Shoesmith is an artist and mystic living in Glasgow. He works messily between sculpture, performance, text, moving image and community organising. His clay practice stems from embodied research into traditional witchcraft as a position for land resistance, political disobedience and gender dissidence. Currently Oren is exploring the tool kit of the Droll Teller, a Cornish tale weaver, as a way to approach complex land realities, rural industries and routes for decolonisation.
His recent projects include Corpores Infames, a performance for Glasgow international 2024 in collaboration with Belladonna Paloma and Rabindranath X Bhose. Corpores Infames is an ode to the bog, drawing on rich histories of bog body sacrifices and the links between them and trans, queer and disabled bodies. What is a Cave if not an opening into the body is his first moving image work, installed at EPOCH at Tremenheere Sculpture Garden in 2024. It is rooted in research into lithium mined from the earth, the lithium found in holy wells and also pharmacologically manufactured lithium in treatments for madness.
Eva Masterman at Building the Clay Commons, photo credit Felicity Crawshaw
Eva Masterman is an artist and educator working with clay for over 16 years, in both sculpture and collaborative participation. She is the founder of The Clay Commons, a developing organisation that explores clay as an agent for change through clay studios as sites of emancipatory education and anticapitalist organising.
Background
This online night class builds on the week-long immersive workshop and collaboration that took place at SSW in November 2023 and Eva Masterman’s PhD research. See images from this week on our blog.
Accessibility Information
If you have any questions or concerns about engaging with Building the Clay Commons Night Class (online), please get in touch with SSW Programme Producer Jo Matthews arts@ssw.org.uk or call the SSW office on 01464 861372.
Reading, resources and tools
We will be sharing reading resources in a variety of formats (videos, podcasts and texts) to suit a variety of learners. For help with reading texts and essays we recommend using free text to speech tools such as Speechify.
All sessions will be recorded and will be available for viewing for up to 1 month after they have occurred, after which time they will be deleted.
Online session support
All sessions and discussions will be supported by a facilitator and someone from SSW will be on hand and available to message privately to answer questions or concerns while the event is running.
Captioning and BSL
Live captioning will be available for every session through Zoom automated captions. We are able to provide a BSL interpreter upon request, please state on your booking form if you would like this provision.
Support workers
If you already work with a support worker or assistant and would like them to attend with you, feel free to bring them along to the session (they do not need to book a ticket).
