For quite a while now we have been thinking and working on a project to give the studio a boost to help us make better use of the space for our work and the students who use it.
As is ever the case when you make things, the space you work in can become quite full, especially if there are other people in there too! So periodically we have a clear out. But even then it is still pretty full. For quite a while we have needed to use the height of the workshop to create more storage space for artwork, packaging & other boring stuff, which currently takes up space which should be better used for current work and equipment we use all the time.
Our main tools, the kilns and wheels have mostly been with us since the start of our business in 2001 and so have seen quite a lot of use, especially in the last few years. They have been showing their age and though they have been very relaible workhorses for us, may soon become less so.
We have been keen also to have both a bigger and a smaller kiln so we can fire bigger, more ambitious pieces as well as fire more regularly in a smaller kiln to allow ideas and work to proceed more quickly.
Our studio has been amazing in letting us develop a teaching side to our business and in one area we have always needed more resource, which is throwing (and the wheels to throw on). There has often been a queue for the wheels we have and sometimes, when running specialist throwing classes, I have had to borrow a wheel or 2 locally.
Aside from all that, we have been in the workshop for 6 years now and know how it works and what would make it (and us) work better, so it seems like it is high time we did those things!
Equipment like kilns and wheels cost and so we began to look for ways to help us fund the purchase of what we needed. We came across the “Mid Devon Prosperity Fund” in our searches and made an initial Expression of Interest and and later an application, which we are delighted to say, was successful!
So we have ordered the kilns and purchased the wheels and have begun the 1st part of the tidy up and reorganisation of the workshop. The second part is to follow soon with the installation of the kilns and in this part we hope also to begin to work on further storage capacity.
We still need to do some fundraising to help with the second part of the project and are hoping to launch a Kickstarter crowdfunding bid in the next few weeks. There will be plenty of new pots as rewards as well as other goodies, which we have been planning for a while. Keep an eye out for it on our Instagram page and of course on our website.