Image from Crowdfunder.co.uk

In honour of the one year anniversary since our successful crowdfund campaign, I thought I'd write a little bit about it. Back then, we were all too busy to stop and reflect, but we learned a lot, and - considering how impactful crowdfunding can be - I thought it was worth sharing some of the insights I gained in case other people can benefit.

Turning Earth was featured in the Crowdfunder Hall of Fame after our campaign generated interest unusually quickly, and the initial target we set was reached in less than 48 hours. I wouldn't want to take too much credit for that; there's nothing stopping an idea whose time has come, and London was due for an open-access ceramics studio on the scale of those found in the US. Still, we were committed, and we'd done the groundwork in building up our audience, and we did everything we could to make it a success. In the end, we raised £18,000 in the pre-sale, and the donations kept coming in long after the campaign ended.

Crowdfunder and crowdfunding were very important to our development, and I would highly recommend this approach to other people trying to launch a social enterprise. The infogram above shows a bit about how it works. The amounts raised in a campaign may seem small compared to what you need, but doing a public crowdfund enables you to leverage funds from other sources. It's a bit like a fundraiser mixed with a proof of concept that enables banks and other funders to understand how your market works.

If I had any tips on how to do it, it would be to study other successful campaigns in the same field as yours. I adapted our strategy from the crowdfund that started The Bicycle Academy, orchestrated by Andrew Denham, to whom I'll always be indebted. His tip to build your audience and 'hit the ground running' was really the most important thing I learned. I worked on networking for a year, building up our social media presence and interacting with our audience using surveys, long before we asked people to commit to financing the project. If you are trying to get your campaign off the ground, I highly recommend you read Andrew Denham's advice, published here: www.thebicycleacademy.org/crowd-funding.

As someone with a background in sales, I also can't stress enough the importance of learning a bit about the science of how a sale works. I would suggest reading a book like Brian Tracy's, The Psychology of Selling.  After you've got the theory, then you could go and learn the ropes of pitching by doing a bit of 'chugging' (charity mugging, more respectfully known as face-to-face fundraising). It's a good way to give something to the world while getting a free crash course in sales. And I am not the only person to have learned reams from this approach; I recently learned that Leo Lawson-O'Neill, the creative director of Eat Work Art (the company behind Hackney Downs Studios and Netil House) also did exactly that before he became an entrepreneur.

The crowdfund launch night was one of the highlights of my life to date. There was a hugely supportive atmosphere as people came together with a common purpose. It was the birth of a wonderful community and I am extremely proud to be able to say that, one year on, it continues to flourish.

-- Tallie

To learn more about our crowdfund campaign you can watch the video we made, here:

Since I last wrote, a lot has happened. After October 16th, when we got the keys to the Arches on Whiston Road, we went from this:

To this...

We open officially on December 3rd.

(You can tell we're tired...)

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Our new location…

I have been working on this project, as many of you will know, since October 2012, helped on the way by several wonderful volunteers. After many false starts and dashed hopes we have finally found an excellent place for the studio, far better than any we’d yet looked at, and now predict we will be able to open this September.  It will take a while to pin down the details of the lease, and until we have done that I can’t disclose the location, but I will whisper ‘Hoxton’ quietly and hope that is enough to excite you. As you may know, Hoxton and Haggerston stations (which are equidistant from the space) are both on that new and wonderful line that runs regularly to Highbury and Islington, 11 minutes north, and down south to New Cross, only 20 minutes away. It’s really easy to get to from many parts of the city. It’s also a great place to spend time, with lots of artists and craftspeople based in the area, wonderful parks, and some interesting new cafes opening up. The Geffrye Museum (home to the annual Ceramics in the City exhibition), is right round the corner. As well as the great overground links there is a bank of ‘Boris’ bikes outside the studio, which is within spitting distance of the canal. We love it. I can also reveal that the studio has a large, private yard that we will transform into a lush garden, where you can expect to spend many an industrious hour being creative while the sun shines. Enough, I’ve said too much already!

Earth Turner Preview Event – Wednesday 26th June

The third piece of exciting news is that our Earth Turner night, a preview and fundraising event, has been set for Wednesday 26th June in a location very near the new studio. If you would like an invite, please sign up and get on our mailing list. We’d love to meet you!

The event is primarily a ‘meet and greet’ for all our supporters and potential members. There will be 3D renderings of the new space, moodboards showing the feel of the studio, throwing demos and free refreshments. We will announce our location that same evening. It will be a great opportunity to talk to us one-to-one, find out more about membership and/or pottery classes, and to network with other ceramicists and hobbyists. If you are a beginner and feel interested in taking up a new craft, come along and find out more – Turning Earth membership may well be for you.

During the event we will be launching our crowdfund campaign, where we aim to raise an ambitious £10,000 with the aid of advance sign-ups from future members and pledges for collectible pieces from our supporters. We will be offering rewards of Turning Earth merchandise (mugs, t-shirts, aprons etc) for crowdfund pledges from as little as £20. We warmly invite you to become an Earth Turner for Turning Earth.

We are extremely thrilled at the generosity of the many people that have jumped on board to help us with our quest to spread the word about the studio. Five high profile London potters, Norman Yap, Lesley McShea, Ali Tomlin, Tina Vlassopulos and Daniel Smith, have so far donated work to reward those that make pledges to help us. We would like to thank them from the bottom of our hearts for being our very first Earth Turners. It’s an amazing thing to do for a new project, and we are very honoured that they have gone to such a tremendous effort on our behalf.

Please continue the great work and keep spreading the word about the studio to all your friends, coworkers, family members and students, or anyone else you meet that might be interested. The more people that know about the project, the more likely we are to hit our crowdfund target and kickstart the studio.

Thank you all, and see you on the 26th!

Tallie Maughan, Founder

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There's always been a special atmosphere at our events, right from the crowdfund launch at Turning Earth's beginning, and so I am looking forward to this weekend's immensely. When I look at what we've achieved together, and what the studio means to people, I feel as if I could burst with happiness. I really do have the dream job; even the dream life. I am lucky enough to work every day with an older brother who I adore, in an environment that I find inspiring. And what's more, I'm surrounded by some of the most talented ceramic artists I've met. I sincerely think that the work that is made in Turning Earth is some of the most beautiful in the world. I feel very, very lucky to be part of it.

This week I have been reminded that my life hasn't always been this way. In a training session on leadership we were asked to describe how we might have been shaped by our childhoods, and so I explained that my father had died when I was 4, and that I'd been in foster care at 15. After the session, one of the other people in the group grabbed me to tell me that my account of my life had surprised her: from my way of expressing myself she had seen me as someone born to privilege, with a good education and a close family and the world at my feet. She hadn't suspected that I'd been through trauma, and she felt closer to me when she became aware of it. But I have to admit I was embarrassed by the situation - I have never known how to talk about the events of my childhood without sounding dramatic or attention seeking, and it feels wrong at the same time to downplay the impact of it. So I felt awkward and I scuttled away.

Suffering is a funny thing. Once it's no longer on the table, it kind of disappears from view. It's much easier to ignore it and carry on. I think this is something we do collectively - it's all sort of embarrassing and no one quite knows what to say about it, and so we seem to have agreed not to focus on it. And that's pretty emotionally crippling when disaster strikes - we have no way to know what to do to help ourselves or each other. I think it's important that we are able to engage with these things, even when it's uncomfortable, although it's pretty hard to know how to handle them.

It happens that the experience of loss has been pretty present for me lately. A few days ago, I went to a conference and met someone who'd worked at the same paper as my father, before he died.  It was almost like my dad had come in to see me at work. After I left the conference, I found myself crying in the street, yet again trying to visualise him, and failing. Childhood loss never leaves you. You lose in childhood, and then you lose over and over again in adulthood as you meet each milestone. Even the milestone of succeeding at the thing you hold dear has tears in it, simply because the person that loved you will never see it. But I am one of the lucky ones; I have had the support I needed to recover. I have received a huge amount of help.

People have told me I am like my father when it comes to my approach to work: he was passionate about his job as a financial journalist, and was writing about the city even on his deathbed, because he loved it so much. He lived and breathed his work, as I do. And I suspect I share that with him also because I lost him: it's been an attempt to fill the gap he left - as capable and determined as he was - that made me so very driven to succeed. His loss is part of the fabric I was formed from.

And this is my point really. If the loss of my father could be so defining, if the events of my childhood a lifetime ago were really that life-altering, then how can I wrap my mind around the fact that right now there are people shivering in a refugee camp a few hundred miles away, without adequate support? While I plan a lovely day to buy and sell pots, flush with the temporary victory of having created something beautiful and worthwhile, there are people who have lost everything, living in the mud and the cold, worrying about their family members. These people are having a far worse experience than I encountered, and I've had a lot of help to cope. Somehow it still seems far away, so much of the time. I don't know the refugees in Calais or see them in the flesh, and so I'm not immediately affected; I don't feel their pain in the way I feel the experience of the people that I care about. But the problem is still there, to reverberate forever if it's left unaddressed. People don't heal on their own. Nor do political situations. It takes other people getting involved.

Lisa, one of Turning Earth's member mentors, has been spending time in Calais, helping refugee families. When she came back, she asked that we make a collection for Help Refugees, a charity working on the ground there, during the sale. It feels like an important opportunity to direct some of the community energy that has grown around Turning Earth, so that it can have an impact where it is most needed. I hope to see our small revolution to make life more beautiful, here, now, somehow help those people on the other side of the water living without the luxuries we are currently fortunate enough to trade. Turning Earth was always, to me, about more than just the making. In its name is the seed of the desire to do things differently, to make things better.

So, this weekend during our sale we are raising money from our seconds table to donate to Help Refugees. We are also collecting warm blankets and sleeping bags to take to the refugee camps in Calais and Dunkirk. Because right now, over there, a child's life is being torn apart. I know from experience that when your family falls apart it is the kindness of strangers that makes it possible to get back on your feet.

If you have blankets and sleeping bags to donate to people living in the cold in temporary shelters, then please bring them with you to the sale tomorrow. We will get them to the people that need them. You can also make a donation at our charity table, or buy some of the specially donated pots from our artists.

See you there. There'll also be delicious food, mulled cider and homemade hot cross buns. :)

--Tallie

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