The BCB education team work with talented artists and makers on a number of outreach and education projects across the City. The main aim is to provide opportunities for everyone to get clay under their nails. For regular updates on all of our current project follow us on the BCB Learning Blog.

World In One City

Jubilee Group
BCB and Appetite, Stoke-on-Trent’s Arts Council Creative People and Places project have brought back together The Jubilee Group for the World In One City 2 project. Working with artist Jasleen Kaur, the group explores themes surrounding cultural identity, place and heritage. Bringing together food and clay, the group has reflected on the new community they find themselves within. The Jubilee Group represents 40-60 adults living in the City who await decisions on their visa or immigration/asylum status. Artist Jasleen Kaur’s work is based in communal eating/feasting.

£1 Homes
BCB have started working within a new community, formed by the sale of £1 Homes in the Portland Street area in Hanley. Led by artist and £1 home-owner Anna Francis, the project is exploring and mapping out the future for the new residents through regular meals, talks and clay based activities. Using the popular Homemaker tableware of the 1950s, the £1 Home residents will work together, to make their own version of the Homemaker dinner service, and map the process of a new community forming in the City.

Typecast 3
BCB’s work with the recovery community in Stoke-on-Trent continues during the Typecast 3 project. Aiming to enable individuals in recovery to creatively plan, communicate and reflect on their recovery journey using clay. The project works towards getting participants back into the community, to share, inspire and teach other people in recovery their new creative skills. Identity, heritage and relationships will be key themes in the project, as artists Joe Hartley, Helen Felcey and Barry Taylor lead the group with their creative processes.

Sparks
Sparks aims to engage pupils within secondary and primary school to re-ignite the use of ceramics in the classroom. BCB are working with two secondary schools and their feeder primaries to share resources and ideas. Ceramic artists Matt Raw, Amy Davis and Rita Floyd, will work in the schools delivering clay workshops based around the themes of Flowers and Food. Thistley Hough Academy, Penkhull and Haywood Academy, Burlsem will lead the two clusters, sharing skills and resources with their partner primary school during the academic year.

INSET - Teachers CPD
Teachers from across the City will be offered the chance to develop a new BCB schools network and gain skills in clay. The CPD clay workshops, led by ceramic artists offer the teachers a chance to try new techniques, develop their own creative talents and get inspiration to take back to the classroom. The network will meet again for more ceramic sessions during the year.

BCB will be hosting a special festival CPD session on Wednesday 21st October 4pm-6:30pm, where all artists from the Sparks project will be sharing clay skills. If you're interested in joining us contact katie@britishceramicsbiennial.com

Flower, Factory, Field
Young people from Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire have been exploring the history of ceramic flower making within the Staffordshire Potteries, making the connection between ceramic industry and the Spode archives relating to the involvement of women workers during WW1.  Students will gain new skills in making bone china flowers under instruction of one of Stoke-on-Trent's remaining talented flower makers, plus we'll be creating a WW1 Ceramics Resource Pack and an online clay flower making tutorial video in order to preserve this historic ceramics process.

Flower Press
Following a residency and five ‘get involved’ workshops – demonstrating flower making and giving patients, visitors, staff will have the opportunity to make their own. BCB will then create a site-specific flower artwork for the PIER information area sited within Haywood Hospital. This project will create a ceramic wall panel clad in specially commissioned Rose Hip clay flowers and a series of five patient diversional therapy workshops representing Rheumatology through flower symbolism.