Dip your toes in ceramics on our short taster courses.
Creating pottery and art out of clay is a beautiful and fulfilling experience. For many of our students, taking a pottery class sparks a lifelong passion for this craft. After dipping their toes into clay on a taster course, students often continue with deeper skill development and practice on one of our longer courses. This short course is suitable for students who have no previous experience working with clay but are intrigued by ceramics and are looking to discover what the process of making ceramics involves, and get some basic hands-on practical experience in making their own pots.
What will you learn in this course?
- Preparing clay / wedging
- Making pottery using pinching techniques
- Making pottery with coiling techniques
- Which tools you need and how to use them
- Throwing pots on the potter’s wheel
- Joining pots together and attaching parts to your pot
- Using decorating slips
- Sgraffito decorating
- Slab building techniques
- Using plaster hump moulds
- Making cylinders and bowls on the wheel
- Trimming pots to refine the shape
- Making foot rings
- Applying glaze to your pieces
Course structure
This course consists of 8 sessions. Each session is a lesson of 3 hours (including cleaning up at the end of the lesson).
Session 1: Kicks off with an introduction to ceramic materials and the processes of making and firing ceramics, as well as Health & Safety in the studio. You will learn how to prepare your clay and start working on your first project.
Sessions 2-4: Students continue to work on their projects while the teacher introduces new techniques to build on your skills, including hand-building, wheel throwing and glazing.
Session 5: Cut-off point for the firing queue. This session is dedicated to applying finishing touches to your projects and getting your pots ready to be bisque fired.
Session 6: are dedicated to glazing your pots. These are usually ready to be collected 2-3 weeks after the end of your course.
Please be sure that you can attend all of the scheduled lesson dates before you sign up. It's particularly important that you attend the first two and the final sessions, otherwise you may struggle to keep up with the rest of the group or end up with unfinished projects at the end of the course. It is not possible to get extra sessions if you do not attend your scheduled lesson.
Frequently asked questions
The main objective of our courses is to teach you how to make ceramics well and help you practise and develop your technique, rather than to make as many pots as possible. We do rather see our students take home a few pieces they’re really proud of and that show off their development in skills, than producing as much as possible.
How many finished pieces you can expect to take home depends entirely on the individual’s skills and artistic vision. While some students enjoy the process and speed that can be achieved with throwing on the wheel, others enjoy the meditative process of making detailed and sculptural work.
Our 12-week courses are our most popular courses as they offer a great balance between learning technique and getting your practice in. Our shorter courses (with exception of our Intensive Courses) are condensed and you’ll have less time to get practising and making than you’ll have on a full 12-week course.
You can not bring your own clay, glazes or other ceramic materials to our classes. If you are keen to experiment with other clays or glazes, we recommend joining our studios as a member which will give you the opportunity to experiment more. Note that it is not possible to use Terracotta or other Earthenware in any of our studios.
Our courses are designed to teach all students hand-building as well as wheel-throwing techniques. Most lessons will have the group of students split in two with half of the group working on the wheel while the other half of the group work on their hand-building projects, and then swap around so that everyone gets a fair chance at practicing all the technique. We do have throwing-only courses for students who wish to learn wheel-throwing only. Look out for those in the course listings.
Tools and materials are not included in the course fee. You can opt-in to purchase a basic toolkit when you book your course. The 8-piece kits cost £5 and contain all the basic tools you’ll need. If you already have your own tools, you can bring those instead. Clay is not included in the course fees. There is a charge of £5 per kg for all the pots you make and wish to fire. You’ll only pay for the pots you select to be fired so you can practice your skills to your heart’s content and choose which creations you want to send to the kilns to be immortalized.
Our intermediate throwing course is aimed at potters who are confident at all the basic throwing techniques such as wedging, centering, making cylinders, making bowls and trimming as these techniques will not be covered in the course. The course focuses on advanced techniques such as throwing larger pieces, lidded jars, teapots, throwing off the hump etc.
You’ll need to bring your own apron to the class and make sure it is clean. Dirty aprons are notorious dust spreaders which is a danger to yourself as well as your fellow students. We recommend choosing non-natural fabrics as they tend to trap clay dust more easily.
We advise you to wear sensible clothing and shoes as pottery can get quite messy!
Once a place has been booked, the fees are non-refundable. However, if we are still able to sell your place to another student before the course starts, we’ll be happy to swap your place over and refund your fees. We’ll do our best, though you’ll understand we can’t make any promises.
On most courses, you should be able to catch up in your next lesson. The first few and last few lessons are the most crucial lessons as that’s when you’ll learn how to get started and when you’ll finish your projects. It is important not to miss these. It is not possible to catch up on a class or sit in on a lesson on a different course. To make sure that you make the most of your course, it is very important that you make sure that you can make all the class dates before you sign up to a course.
You should wait at least 2 weeks after your last lesson before coming to collect your class pots. Please note that you won’t receive an email from our team when your work will be ready to collect. You’ll have to collect your work within 2 months of ending your course. Our studios are busy with a continuous stream of new students and we do not have the space to store your pots for any longer than that.
All our courses, with the exception of those advertised as ‘intermediate’, are suitable for students of all levels. You don’t need any previous experience of ceramics to join the course and get stuck in. We do get many students who do our courses more than once - while they have the basic skills, they use the course to refine their technique and get some more practice under the guidance of a teacher. And of course there is the social aspect of being part of a group and learning together.