Whitegold International Ceramics Prize Convivial Clay - public art project, Grow It Cook It Eat It

The Portland Inn Project were one of the winners of the Whitegold International Ceramics Prize 2020, which resulted in the public art project Grow It Cook It Eat It with Whitegold and Edible St Austell.

Due to Covid restrictions the first phase of the project was conducted online, with The Portland Inn Project artists Anna Francis, Rebecca Davies and Alice Thatcher sending making packs containing clay and seeds by post to participants. Face Pot making workshops were conducted, and the participants grew plants to bring to the open day at the Edible St Austell allotment and green space at the open day on June 19th 2021.
A large scale face pot was built on site, to be left with the Edible St Austell volunteers, and a shop window was displayed about the project during the Whitegold festival.

Info shared about the project: GROW it, COOK it, EAT it with The Portland Inn Project (Stoke-on-Trent.)

200 Words about our Project:
We are excited to be working as part of Whitegold to celebrate the strengths of community organisations based in St Austell and St Blazey.
Key themes emerged from our conversations with community groups: heritage, growth, learning, organising and sustainability. Our approach, as artists is to develop these themes using creative methods that truly represent the community.
Our project is in three stages:
GROW it: We will recruit community members to work with us to create face-pots representing our people and places. We will discuss the importance of eating together, while collecting recipes, and will grow salads and herbs in the pots we make.
COOK it: We will explore the significance of the gathered recipes and how they represent our cultures/families/history.
The virtual workshops, creative packs and physical workshops (across stage 1 and 2), will enable an exchange of ideas, knowledges, experience and matter – clay!
EAT it: A hosted feast will be programmed, and the group will put together the menu, and the guest list; using the meal as a chance to advocate for and with their communities, inviting local identified stakeholders to join in the celebration of the community and host conversations that they wish to instigate.

Quote about our interest in The Whitegold Project:
At the heart of The Portland Inn Project is an understanding of the amazing material potential of Clay for our community, both in terms of a locational history, but also in something quite primal we experience when we work together with clay. We love the work being done by Whitegold with communities and the landscape, and recognise a correlation between our places. For this reason we are so pleased to be able to share our work and learn from our experiences with Whitegold.
Delivering a programme for our community during the Coronavirus Crisis has been challenging, but has afforded us some time to reflect on the work we have been doing here since 2015, and to spend some time planning for the future. We have been able to create a successful programme of creative packs and online workshops with our community, experience which will be so valuable in relation to the Whitegold Project we have planned.