Blog

We've noticed that handmade wooden spoons look beautiful with the ceramics we make. So we thought we'd invite expert spoon makers, Yoav Elkyam and Adam Hawker, in for a day of whittling.

They taught two courses and twenty of us got to try the craft. It's incredibly relaxing: no kilns, no glaze... just you and a piece of wood. But - as we soon learned - the knives do have to be very sharp. You can't relax too much! Still, we were pleased with the results.

The spoon in the picture is my first ever try, and I absolutely loved making it. We're looking forward to hosting more of these kinds of workshops in the future.

-- Tallie

Images: Sabrina Dallot-Seguro

‍

This week we were excited to receive a visit from ITV's Giovanna Fletcher, who has been exploring activities that people do for their 'me time' for the Lorraine Breakfast show.

We felt quite smug at finding ourselves ahead of the curve, after learning that Lena Dunham has been tweeting about "the indie ceramics renaissance that's happening now" and that David Beckham has been trying a bit of 'paint your own pottery'. Apparently everyone's into ceramics these days. But to hear it described as 'cool' gave us something to think about - it isn't the first word that springs to mind when thinking of our daily life in the studio. Still, we will celebrate finding ourselves in the right place at the right time. Hopefully it will get a few more people into the craft, which we reckon is truly good for the soul. And perhaps it will also bring more people to our studio sales and help our artists make their hobbies self-sustaining. At the moment, that's the dream.

Giovanna gave it a go with a little (no, actually a lot) of help from Ben Sutton, one of our resident throwers. In spite of the to-be-expected Ghost references, he got away without doing a Patrick Swayze impression. I was a bit disappointed, to be honest.

-- Tallie

‍

To say that Turning Earth teacher Tessa Barrett was excited when she heard that Anita and Gleb from the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing would be coming to the studio would be a bit of an understatement. Tessa, who is also a dancer in her other life, is a real fan of the show, and she had a great time taking the two stars for a spin.

As Tessa pointed out on the day, dancing and throwing are quite similar skills. You have to stay centred, have good coordination, know how to be focused and relaxed at the same time, etc etc. As a professional dancer, Gleb, it turns out, was naturally good at it (though we have to say not quite as good as he looked on the show - television editing is a wonderful thing).

Although we too love to turn the studio into one big dance floor - we do it with enthusiasm when we hold our member parties - we have never seen Turning Earth looking quite so glamorous as it did with them in it.

-- Tallie

‍

I'm very pleased to announce that my brother Lewis is joining the team at Turning Earth. He's been hanging around the side lines since long before we opened - giving me advice over supper, making the canapes for our crowdfund launch, and generally marshalling the troops whenever I needed them marshalled.

And we're finally in the position where he can come on board full-time. First he will be learning the ropes, and then he will be bringing his considerable management skills into the studio to improve all of our processes. It's been a natural evolution and we are very lucky that we have the kind of relationship that enables us to work together on a shared vision.

I'm sure our members will see over the coming months that Lewis can take the helm of the ship and lead in his own right. He comes to us from Bupa Home Healthcare, where he was first a nurse and then a manager and clinical trainer. During his role there he used to administer chemotherapy and to care for people in their final hours. This background means he is adept at managing technical details at the highest level of responsibility while supporting people at a very human level.  He is passionate about developing a warm and inclusive community culture at the studio while delivering a structured approach to management and compliance - and at 18 months old, that's exactly what Turning Earth needs.

Lewis will be working closely with our suppliers at Potclays in Stoke-on-Trent, and our team in the studio, to use their expertise to develop the facilities and the technical services that are offered at Turning Earth. The world of ceramics is fortunately as familiar to him as it was to me when we opened - growing up as we did in our mother's home studio, we were both pretty much gestated in a kiln.

Welcome to the team, Lewis!

-- Tallie

Photo: Sabrina Dallot-Seguro

‍

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: