Community Maker and The Portland Inn Project

The Portland Inn Project is a creative arts project in partnership with The Portland Street Community Group, Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Appetite, AirSpace Gallery and The British Ceramics Biennial for a community in Stoke-on-Trent, where derelict properties were sold for £1 with the view of changing the fortunes of the area. The developments to the built environment, which sought to bring a new group of working residents into the area, had the aim of ‘changing the rhythms’ and reducing other recognised local problems such as fly tipping, drug dealing and anti-social behaviour. The Paul Hamlyn funded ceramics project ‘Community Maker’ aims to work with the new and existing community in the area, bringing people together to deal with community cohesion problems as well as to strategise and plan community priorities for developments in the area.
‘Community Maker’ was initially planned as a 3 year partnership between British Ceramics Biennial and AirSpace Gallery, which began in the summer of 2015. The project was developed with lead artist and £1 home owner Anna Francis and aimed to connect with the cultural diversity of the local community by exploring personal stories, ceramic heritage, cultural identities and relationship to place, through making and sharing food, and designing and making ceramic objects associated with the communal consumption of food. A secondary question raised by the project involved exploring the impact of durational approaches to commissioning public art projects, and what happens when artists work where they live.
The paper was delivered in Session 3: Ceramics, tradition & heritage of the Ceramic Values, Ceramics and Its Dimensions Congress 'Can Ceramics Make a Difference?'