In June and July, artist Verity Howard ran a series of ceramic workshops with Year 9 students from Fairfield High School who have chosen GCSE Art when they go into Year 10. 

These sessions were inspired by artwork created by Matthew Cornford and John Beck at No.1 Station Approach, Hereford. After the school summer holidays, Verity returned to Fairfield High School to see the fired vessels that had emerged from the kiln. Read this blog post written by Verity to hear about her reflections on the finished works and her time working with the students.

At the beginning of our project, we set out to look at Fairfield’s identity and what this meant to the students. This was informed by Cornford and Beck’s ‘The Art School Project’ which explores the local identity of art schools and reflects on the value of creativity.  In the first workshop we discussed Fairfield’s identity as a group and three main themes emerged which were rural surroundings, the people who are part of the school and the school values. As the project progressed we focused on Fairfield’s rural environment. I feel this is really effectively reflected in our vessels which have captured a strong sense of place. I am really pleased with how the works have turned out and am especially impressed with the detailed drawings and monoprints on the clay’s surface. If you look closely, you will see some prints which depict the spire of St Peter’s Church which can be seen from the school grounds. There are also amazing prints of natural forms, animals and the addition of sculptural creatures that crawl around the sides of the vessels. When looking at these works I think you can really see how much the students value their natural surroundings and the animals that are central to the school. I also feel our works capture the energy and creativity of the students who took part in this project. 

When working with the pupils it quickly became apparent to me how much they enjoyed the hands-on process of working with clay to create their own 3D works of art. It was also great to hear how much they enjoyed learning how to monoprint onto clay. Although this is a specialist ceramic process, I hope the skills of mark making and abstract drawing will be transferable and will enrich their future work.

Having developed the framework for this project it was important to me to allow space and flexibility to be responsive to the students’ own ideas as the workshops progressed. I feel that this way of working has been very successful as it is evident that the vessels reflect the pupils’ own unique voice; they decided what the monoprints should portray, where they should be placed and what form the vessels should take. Due to this ownership of the works the students were really enthusiastic about the project and excited to see the works completed and fired.

I also feel that running this project over a series of weeks was especially valuable as this allowed the pupils to develop more advanced ceramic skills and gain a better understanding of this material. Additionally, on each visit I arrived in the morning and worked at the back of the classroom preparing the clay and materials before the afternoon workshop. This allowed many other students from different year groups the chance to experience the project and the processes that go into working with clay. 

I was so pleased to hear that the students enjoyed working on this project and I think they should be very proud of what they achieved. Thank you to Fairfield High School for hosting me and to Meadow Arts for inviting me to run this project. Best of luck to the G.C.S.E Art students and hopefully some of you will go on to study for a career in the arts and especially ceramics in the future.

Quotes from students:

What did they learn?

1. I learned how to print onto clay using more than one technique. 

2. We hadn’t done a ceramics project in school before, and it was fun to work with clay.

3. We learned how to make quite large vessels from clay without needing a potter’s wheel. We used slabs of clay, which made it quite easy to create something very good from scratch.

4. We learned slip glazing techniques and how to print different patterns onto a vase easily. 

What did they enjoy?

1. I enjoyed the process from start to finish. In our first lesson we went outside to make drawings inspired from nature around the school. To the last lesson where we printed our nature drawings onto the pots. 

2. It was fun to see the artwork develop over the weeks that Verity came into the art room.

3. I enjoyed learning a new technique, that I wouldn’t have tried without Verity coming into school. 

4. It was really cool how all our different pots made a set, but all looked unique, because of different peoples’ creativity. 

We learnt monoprinting with slip.

The thing I enjoyed the most was the pot we got to make to express how we thought of the school.

We learnt how to join pieces of clay together by cross-hatching the edges of the clay. We also learnt how to print onto clay using underglaze.

I enjoyed drawing and using the different tools to make our pots.