Check out latest Evening Standard article on cooperatives in Lewisham! What a joy to read about local cooperative projects in mainstream press. Great thanks to the editing team for reaching out to us, what a beautiful 10th anniversary moment for us.
If you would like to learn more about the studio, our about page has a lot of information about your values and principles.
Today we are celebrating 10 years since the legal entity holding Ceramics Studio Co-op had been registered. Starting with a dream of an impossible, and working through challenges and demands for personal growth, constant improvement, day-by-day learning, it’s been a humbling journey. We’ve met incredible people on the way, and have seen hard times and immence beauty created by human hands just like our own.
The workshop asked us for personal sacrifices, hard work, and readiness to be changed. We did not always accept it, but stayed with what had to be done for it’s existence. Sometimes this space carried us through great personal challenges, and we are grateful for it.
The community that gathers around and within the studio had been a beautiful source of joy, co-learning and co-creating together. Not just clay and ceramic pieces we get to make next to one another, but we are co-creating ourselves though creative work we undertake together, through being with each other in its pain and glory. Doing this in the community of like-minded and deeply passionate people is rewarding and life-transforming experience, and we are thankful for it.
We do wonder often what it means to create space for clay and its people, and take responsibility for who gets to participate and practice within the frame that the workshop can offer. Clay has its healing and connecting power. As a collective media where firings and space are shared, and conversations continue we create meaning around our work and how we share it. Being both at the edge of it and in the eye of the storm is the most rewarding journey.
Seeing our studio become a generative part of the artistic community of London that champions ceramics arts has been humbling and beautiful. We are grateful for each and every person who came in, contributed, attended classes and free events, fired their sculpture and pottery, and especially for our studio members who are at the heart of this community. It is such a joy to work with you and for you, it is such a joy to follow your ceramics journeys and see you strive for excellence, develop, change, become your best selves, and nourish your talents as artists and makers of things.
We are also grateful for funding that Arts Council England and Lewisham Council awarded us, and all kind and humble help from Cooperatives UK, their staff and business advisors, all tasty meals and coffees served to us by local businesses and cafes. We would not be here without you, and we are lucky to be here with you.
We are delighted to introduce our newest addition to the studio equipment, a state-of-the-art 330 litre front loader kiln. We named our new biggest kiln so far after Dame Lucie Rie, prominent Austrian-born British studio potter, recently celebrated by a in-depth show in Kettles Yard.
With the promise of advanced technology and precise temperature control it gives us many hopes for the kinds of creations may now be envisoned and fired with us. This kiln is our first front loader, and it will take some time for Tatiana to learn ins and outs of how to make the most of it, but it is very exciting step forward, especially for sculptors we work with.
If you are looking for a community kiln hire, do get in touch with us via firing service page or contact form. It is our passion to make kilns available to the community of makers and artists in London. After 10 years of continuous work with so many sculptors and artists we have enough experience to be able to help almost anyone.
We are excited to share that our pottery studio just relocated to Deptford. Take a note of our new address:
73-79 Childers Street
London
SE8 5JR
And here is a photo of Anna, moving a kiln on a pallet lift, and our beautiful old pottery classroom behind.
We look forward to re-starting our regular program of pottery classes in Deptford. It is very exciting that we are easily accessible and a walking distance away from New Cross and Greenwich.
Bye-bye Juno Way 👋
Ceramics Studio Coop switched to 100% renewable electricity this week. All electricity we now use comes from 100% renewable sources like sun, wind and water. Big thanks to our energy supplier Octopus Energy for making it possible.
We now provide 100% green energy pottery and ceramics firing service for artists and makers in London, and use renewables to keep our classroom and workshops warm. It’s one more step towards ‘net-zero’, and a very satisfying step for us to being able to put our money where our mouth is. One more reason for you to feel good when you are making your pottery with us at our Open Access Ceramics Studio or at a pottery class.
We pleased to have this opportunity to match our values with action, finally. 100% green energy was not available at our industrial estate in Lewisham before.
Find out more about what 100% green energy is, and how our suppliers support generation of green energy in our grid here. What does it mean to choose a green energy supplier?
We are delighted to share that we have received an offer of support from Arts Council England as a part of Covid-19 Emergency Response Fund. This Grant will be used towards the costs of running the studio at the time when we have to stop or minimize our activities, and next 6 months of operational costs.
We are humbled by and grateful for this support, and it is a turning point for our organization. From thinking about survival we can now focus on plans for reopening, supporting our community and bringing back services.
This grant for us is also a recognition of our contribution towards publicly funded arts though work we do teaching pottery and ceramics, serving as a ground for talent development and a place of excellence in making.
We have worked from the early stages of the “lockdown” trying to secure funding or any local authority support, which was futile for a long time. It had been a hard time of co-working, crunching numbers, attending seminars, emergency planning and bare minimum. This acknowledgement by Arts Council England is a testimony to the persistence of our team, our collective faith in the possibility of the positive outcome for our organization.
Thank you for all the support, and positive thoughts you were and are sending us. Your goodwill and care gave us a chance to get where we are now. Despite that the future is so unpredictable to many of us, we hope studio will be an island of stability for many in our making community, we are standing in solidarity with organizations, artists and makers who are facing difficulty at the moment.
Now more than ever we miss having our makers and students around, and we hope we can all be making together soon.
We unfortunately have to close for visitors/ and work collection due to pandemic, and “Stay at home” policy. We will be closed until it is safe to open again.
No recently made work will be thrown away at time of the pandemic. If you are concerned about work made before January 2020, please email, so we can keep it for you.
If your work is left with Firing Service, we will not throw it away.
Thank you for your understanding and support. Stay safe, and stay at home as much as you can!
Your Ceramics Coop team.
Structures That Cooperate: Get Paid! installation view, Cubitt Gallery, 2019.
Photography by Mark Blower, courtesy of Cubitt Artists.
We are delighted to participate in Structures That Cooperate: Get Paid! in January 2019. Please see the copy of the information from Cubitt, and check out the special programme website for more information.
Structures That Cooperate: Get Paid!
Private View:Â Thurs 17 Jan 2019
6.30–8.30pm
Cultural Capital Cooperative Object #2 (CCCO#2) produced by artists Nikita Gale, Candice Lin, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Nour Mobarak, Blaine O’Neill, and Patrick Staff, Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S) and Ceramics Studio Co-op and events with COOP Fund and Cooperative Lunch #2 hosted by Cooperativas de Alimentos
Open: 18 Jan–24 Feb 2019, Wed–Sun, 12–6pm
Events:
Cooperative Lunch #2 hosted by Cooperativas de Alimentos:  Sun 24, Feb 1–3pm
COOP Fund: Sat 16 Feb, 3–5pm
Structures That Cooperate reopens for 2019 with a second configuration of the space designed by Mexico City-based artist Clemence Seilles. It will host newly installed work in the gallery and an ongoing public programme under the title Get Paid!
Structures That Cooperate: Get Paid! presents artworks, events and projects operating with politicised models of economy and organisation. These include Cultural Capital Cooperative Object #2 (CCCO#2) a cooperatively produced and owned film by produced by artists Nikita Gale, Candice Lin, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Nour Mobarak, Blaine O’Neill, and Patrick Staff amplified by the Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S) installed alongside works from the Ceramics Studio Co-op, London.
In continuation of a format established in October, where Cubitt’s gallery is used for an extended schedule of events, commissions, research and exhibitions, Get Paid! will present work across several formats and timeframes
For a 12-month period Cubitt will be licensing the CCCO#2 film as a process of dialogue and support of the Cultural Capital Cooperative group. CCCO#2 will be installed in the gallery for Get Paid! inviting Black Obsidian Sound System to amplify the sound of the film for the opening night. Black Obsidian Sound System is a collectively made and owned sound system established in the summer of 2018 with the intention of bringing together a community of queer, trans and non binary people of colour involved in art, sound and radical activism.
After CCCO#2’s public installation in the gallery, the film will be available to view at Cubitt by appointment until December 2019, alongside a template of the CCC license agreement. This agreement will be made available as a free download from the Cubitt website as a resource for others, to be adapted and used in support of future cooperative art production.
Into this context, Get Paid! invites another cooperative, Ceramics Studio Co-op an artist-run worker co-operative in south London. Ceramics Studio Co-op will present a selection of works for sale by its members and, as part of a longer term conversation, are working with The Voice of Domestic Workers towards the production of a new collaborative ceramic work for sale later in 2019.
Ongoing collaborations include working with Clemence Seilles on the scenography of the gallery space, The Voice of Domestic Workers in residence, Schooling & Culture at AMSI and research with W.A.G.E.
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Structures that Cooperate is a programme of projects that began October 2018 that talk to Cubitt’s context as an artist-run co-operative. It is a call to question default approaches to programming a gallery space, looking instead to collective formats, imaginaries and realities.
Projects and artists who will feature in the 2019 programme include: Ain Bailey, Lucy Clout, Deborah Findlater, Aya Haidar with The Voice of Domestic Workers and Women for Refugee Women, Adelita Husni-Bey, Schooling & Culture with Arts and Media School Islington, Serena Lee, W.A.G.E, Cubitt’s Education programme and more to be announced.
This exhibition is supported by Arts Council England and Outset Contemporary Art Fund.
We are happy to announce that we will run new People’s Pottery Class sessions on Thursday evening, which is now open for bookings. The class will be run by Lenka Kalafutova, ceramics artist and maker. Currently Lenka runs successful and popular Ceramics Studio Co-op throwing on potter’s wheel sessions.
Lenka’s practice involves slab building, tile making, street art and print, and we look forward to see where she will take her first People’s Pottery group.
More information about Lenka is in her studio profile.
