Practice & Persistence

Pottery, Ceramics, classes, workshops, craft, warwickshire, Beginners, nervous,

Leyla Folwell 2009

As our 'Geeks Support Group' takes off I ve been thinking a lot about my early potting years.

I started my career in evening classes while I shovelled pasties by day. Eventually breaking away from the 9-5 (7-7!!) and going to University to study it for three glorious years.

Above is a shot of me making my spiral sculptures in 2009 after an inspiring trip to India. The space in at the bottom of my parents garden and you can see by my layering it was freezing! Also, I went to great lengths not to ruin the T&G : )

Pottery, Ceramics, classes, workshops, craft, warwickshire, Beginners, nervous, Leyla Folwell

'Gaya' - terracotta, slips & glaze

I ve found all different spaces and ways to make over the years. Often doing residencies, being lucky to get jobs with workshop space included.

It s often not easy to keep it going. A class is great to start, to learn, but once you are up and running you want to make decisions about materials and firing types. That is how our Geeks courses started. After a few years here in Ettington Park I found I was having more and more conversations with people about moving on, choosing their own style, and setting up. So I formalized it in to a 'Setting Up at Home' workshop.

'Practice & Persistence' - a sculpture I made inspired by my students struggles

Now that we have run that several years running we have a lot of students at various stages and so now we have formed a support group for sharing ideas, problems and eating cake.

I am now working on a selection of different workshops in response to the needs that have come up in these sessions. I am really enjoying moving my lesson planning to another level.

We ll keep you posted, make sure you are on our Mailing List.

Leyla x