At Mid­dle­port Pot­tery, we led an ex­plor­a­tive proj­ect, cre­at­ing a se­ries of tem­po­rary struc­tures, in­ter­ven­tions and sound­scapes across the site. The icon­ic in­te­ri­or of the bot­tle kiln, the hid­­den cor­ners and traces of for­mer fac­to­ry build­ings be­came ac­tive, con­tem­pla­tive spaces where vis­i­tors could ex­pe­ri­ence the lay­er­ed qual­i­ties of this ex­traor­di­nary site of liv­ing her­it­age.

Four art­ists, Guil­laume Duj­at (Sound Art­ist), Kie­ran Han­son from Ken­a­wa Films (Film-maker), Joe Hart­ley from Stan­dard Prac­tice (Prod­uct De­sign­er) and my­self, came to­geth­er as an in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary team to shape and cre­ate Res­o­nat­ing Spaces. Over three-months, we work­ed with the Burs­lem Ju­bi­lee Group, ref­u­gee and asy­lum seek­ers in Stoke⁠-⁠on⁠-⁠Trent as co-pro­duc­ers and par­tic­i­pants in the ex­plo­ra­tion and ex­pres­sion of col­lec­tive out­comes.

Whilst the over­rid­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of vis­it­ing Mid­dle­port Pot­tery is that ce­ram­ic wares have been made con­tin­u­ous­ly for over 130 years on site, we felt drawn to the pro­cess­es and ac­tiv­i­ties, which wrap round the pot­tery pro­duc­tion. On the canal wharf, lengths of hazel were re-in­tro­duced to the fac­to­ry land­scape, cre­at­ing a se­ries of tem­po­rary struc­tures and mak­ing spaces. With­in the lean-to, the nat­u­ral fre­quen­cies and har­mon­ics of clay were ex­plored, the traces of ear­li­er fac­to­ry pro­cess­es pro­vid­ed a back­drop for new pro­duc­tion. The inner cham­ber, Mid­dle­port’s sole re­main­ing bot­tle kiln, pro­vid­ed the at­mos­pher­ic set­ting for un­fa­mil­iar sonic com­po­si­tions, mark­ing the rhythms of the fac­to­ry and cap­tur­ing clay in trans­for­ma­tion­al states. The site of the for­mer frit kiln be­came the in­spi­ra­tion for a brick-mak­ing proj­ect which es­tab­lished a ma­te­ri­al ex­change be­tween Mid­dle­port Pot­tery and the White Gold Proj­ect in St. Aus­tell, Corn­wall. Brick-mak­ing work­shops took place through­out the fes­ti­val on the canal wharf with over 200 bricks being pro­duced.

Film-maker, Kie­ran Han­­son cre­at­ed a re­sponse to the in­dus­tri­al and cre­a­tive prac­tices at Mid­dle­port Pot­tery, trac­ing the proj­ect as it passes back and forth be­tween times and cul­tures.

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