Re-activating British Ceramic Manufacture’s Intangible Heritage

Brownsword was invited by the Stoke And North Staffs Women's Network to deliver a lecture surrounding his ongoing artistic mediation of the histories of ceramic manufacture in Stoke-on-Trent. The lecture focused upon craft knowledge within industry that remains endangered/unviable for contemporary production, raising questions surrounding the value of inter-generational skill - as negotiated through his FACTORY project, shown as part of Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale (GICB) 2017.

‘Neil Brownsword creates installations using ceramics, film and performance. His work takes the ceramics industry of his native Staffordshire as its primary subject, observing its people and production systems. He has sought to challenge the marginalisation of craft skill in industrial contexts, and to highlight the danger of specialist knowledge being lost. Recent work has been made in collaboration with former industry artisans, revealing their people-embodied skills and exploring the value of the industry's intangible cultural heritage. Brownsword was awarded the Grand Prize at the 2015 Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale, South Korea’.
http://northstaffswomen.org.uk/IWD-2019-Speakers/

Other speakers included Potter Kate Malone, Laura Cohen, CEO at the British Ceramics Confederation, Kevin Millward Course Director at Clay College in Stoke.