The studio is easily accessible by public transport. The 43 and 134 bus stop is a 2 minute walk away, and it's a quick 6 minute walk from Highgate station on the Northern Line. There are plenty of bike parking spaces within the gated area of the yard.

Please note, as the studio is located in a residential area, it is a condition of our planning consent that we minimise car use. The studio and surrounding roads have parking available only for disabled users.

Turning Earth classes are all taught by passionate ceramic artists who also make and sell their own work. Many of them have followed the Turning Earth route into a making career - beginning as members in our studios and slowly progressing to selling their work and often opening their own studios.

They have all studied and worked on their own practice extensively before training as teachers through the Turning Earth studio system, and shadowed and assisted other instructors before becoming lead teacher in their own classes. All teachers are well-versed in the Turning Earth curriculum, and each will have personalised the course to reflect their own strengths and making styles.

Practicing ceramics may just make you a happier person. Studies have shown the numerous mental health benefits of participating in craft, which -  because it is both repetitively physical and involves completing manageable tasks - releases the “happy chemicals” of serotonin and dopamine in the brain.* A lot of people find that making, like meditation, helps restore a sense of presence and mental balance.

Working with clay is part of the evolutionary history of human beings. As hunter gatherers, we spent millennia digging it from riverbanks and shaping it into usable vessels. By following our innate desire to put our hands in the earth and mould it, we are using our physiology in a way that is continuous with our evolutionary development.

Turning Earth pioneered the open-access membership studio model in the UK. Launching in 2013 to bring to London a model of community ceramics makerspace that had been developing within the US, Turning Earth has since inspired many similar studios, both in this country and around the world.

Turning Earth has now grown to encompass four sites in East London, with studios in railway arches in the Kingsland Viaduct in Hoxton, in the Argall Avenue industrial site near Lea Bridge station in Leyton. The new studio in Highgate, on the edge of Queen's Woods in North London, is Turning Earth's sixth studio site.

Aside from being the first of its kind in this country, Turning Earth is  known for the scale and beauty of its spaces and the efficiency of its technical systems and firings,  which have been studiously refined over nearly a decade. Each of the studios is an open, airy, hub that can accommodate hundreds of makers each month. The spaces are exceptionally clean, minimising the risks to makers' lungs posed by silica dust in the air, reflecting the high value Turning Earth places on health and safety.

Turning Earth is also legendary for its maker markets, which attract people from all over the country keen to discover the new rising stars of the ceramics world. Over the years these have been attended by a significant number of Instagram's most influential food stylists, and many of the UK's best loved celebrity chefs.

Located in a small industrial enclave surrounded by Queen's Woods, the new studio has spent the last 25 years as a houseplant design workshop.

A classic 1930s brick built industrial building, the 6,000 sq ft building has a north-facing saw-toothed roof, which offers the perfect light for crafting. Lovingly renovated by its former occupier, a life-long collector of British studio ceramics and a personal friend of some of the leading ceramicists of the post-war generation, its pillars are painted a distinctive orange. This playful touch will be developed further with Turning Earth's new range of colourful, mid-century-inspired studio furniture.

Adjacent Highgate Woods is home to a recently discovered Roman kiln, and indeed the practice of pottery in the area goes back to prehistory. In the studio's back yard is the makings of a dry garden, which Turning Earth will develop into a contemplative space, decorated with stone built cairns in tribute to the ancient history of these islands, when pottery would first have been made here. In honour of the Asian-influenced studio ceramics culture we have inherited from the potters of the early 20th Century, the garden will be planted with rhododendrons and maples common to the magical Zen gardens of Japan.

Maker-spaces are nothing new; people have been getting together to share equipment and resources for crafting pretty much since time began. But after the industrial revolution, shared crafting spaces began to disappear from our culture.

As we collectively awaken to the satisfaction that can be gained from making things as a leisure activity - for love as well as for a living - the concept of the membership studio, with an open-access model like a gym where you come and go as you please, has become increasingly popular.

Makerspaces are extraordinarily effective learning hubs because their users are motivated by pure enjoyment, and the energising elements of spontaneity and play are not lost under a pile of paperwork.

In the makerspace, people of all abilities and backgrounds practice side by side. Turning Earth members include everyone from Turner Prize winning painters to the long-term unemployed. There’s  no set curriculum, and yet people within our walls progress very rapidly. Since launching in 2013, we’ve seen a large number of our open-access makers build successful careers in ceramics.

And, because of the organic way in which people with common interests are brought together, it's also a brilliant way to make friends.