Ceramic dynamics at Rochester Square in Camden

Around five years ago, my husband and I took on the abandoned plant nursery at Rochester Square. What was once a home for film industry props had been lying dormant for over a decade, only its bones remaining in the form of the original beams. I liked the idea of the square becoming the kind of place that mixes everyone together, a centre point for people to come to.

After taking part in aceramic course at Working Men’s College, I discovered an affinity with ceramics and developed an interest in how the material plays a similar role in bringing people together. The course was intergenerational and suddenly I had friends in their 80s. Simultaneously, I was running workshops in schools with young children. Anybody can use clay, it’s not an elite material, so I set up a studio, open to everybody across different generations and abilities.

At the heart of Rochester Square is the idea of a symbiotic relationship between clay, food and the garden. When people think about ceramics, they don’t immediately think about what we eat from, that a plate is made from soil. Travelling to India ten years ago, I found myself at a festival party where they were serving chai tea in tiny earthenware cups. People drank the shot of tea and then threw the cup to the ground. The cups were fired at a very low temperature so they become brittle and smashed, returning home to the soil. I thought it was magical, the way the clay becomes a cycle of itself.