Kinsale Pottery & Art School 2008 schedule

Just a quick note to say tht the 2008 programme, dates and prices are now posted to my website.
We've added new weekend courses:

• Jewellery-making with Flicky Howe
• Raku Kiln Building and Firing with Adrian Wistreich
• Painting & Life Painting with Jane Skovgaard

We're also re-running successful weekends from the 2007 programme - bronze casting, mosaic-making, explorations in thrown pottery, introduction to ceramics, glass fusing and stained glass (we have a new teacher, Una O'Sullivan, since Paul Drover emigrated to Newfoundland).

Summer 2007 was the busiest since the pottery opened in 2000, with about 60 children attending summer camps and both adult ceramics summer schools booked out. In 2008, we're adding another week to the adult schedule to try and accommodate more bookings.

Term times have been less busy this year, with many local people too busy commuting to work in Cork City to get time for evening classes. Nevertheless, there are still two evening classes each week (Tuesday and Wednesday) and two mornings (Wednesday and Thursday) for those who can still come. In 2008, we're restructuring the term-times into blocks of 6 weeks, allowing beginners to book for one six-week course rather than having to commit for a 10 or 12 week term. Those with experience are charged less, and can book for two 6 week blocks at a time and save even more money. There will be four 6-week courses in the year, which means I get to take November off - in the hope of taking an 'exotic holiday'....

Finally, we've already hosted about 28 private and corporate bookings this year - roughly one a week - and these range from 4 to 40 people at a time. These are becoming the backbone of the pottery business. We addedd jewellery-making to the roster of hen party options, along with ceramics/pottery, mosaic-making and drawing. Long may it continue!

Crafts in West Cork

Loads going on in the crafts sector in West Cork these days.... West Cork Leader's Fuschia Brands group is doing Showcase for the second year running - at Dublin's RDS in January 2008 - last year, seven of us shared a stand in the newcomers' hall, which is great for retailers to check out what's new in crafts. Of the seven, four won Index 50 awards! My own work - a new range of porcelain paper clay giftware in small boxes was taken up by Kilkenny Design:

Fuschia Brands is also taking a group stand at the Cork City Hall Christmas Fair - which runs from 13-16th December (check out http://www.nationalcraftsfair.ie/)

Cork Art & Design, the organisation representing crafts people in Cork County, is trying desperately to raise funds for the employment of a professional crafts officer to manage a range of projects. This funding looked 'on the cards' this year from the Enterprise Boards, but has since evapourated. Meanwhile, Cork County Council is backing CAD's proposal to hold a large crafts exhibition at County Hall in March 2008. I stepped down as Chairman of CAD this week after two years in the role. This was partly because of frustration over the ongoing failure of support agencies to work together to support the sector, and partly because I'm so involved in other committees.....

Kinsale Arts Week Board met last week to start planning the 2008 festival (july 12-20th), and this promises to be the best year yet - top quality, cutting edge, community focussed and much more..... the programme will be posted to the KAW website in about April.

In January I helped to set up (and of course got volunteered to become Chairman of) West Cork Calling - a tourist business co-operative for small and medium sized tourist businesses in West Cork. In May, we launched publicly:

With 36 member companies to date, we have developed our website and a brochure and we're ready to start taking bookings for bespoke holidays. What has this to do with crafts? Well, of the CAD members in Cork County, 14 have studios open to the public and ready to take bus tours. Soon we'll have a bus tour organised which picks up at several hotels in the county and takes in some of these studios and galleries.

Hands on is going through a 'quiet phase' since we haven't much money this year, but we did organise a fun 'open day' event at Kinsale Pottery during the arts festival and we are going to repeat this at the Skibereen Food and Craft Festival which is on September 22nd:

Flicky Howe teaches Jewellery

We've added a jewellery-making weekend to Kinsale Pottery's roster for 2008 - Flicky Howe, a West Cork designer and jewellery-maker (see http://www.flicky.ie/) is offering a two-day course in various making techniques for beading, earrings, tiaras, corsages and many more ideas, using a wide range of purchased and found materials, from silver and beads to feathers, shells and glass.

The course, which came from a one-off session with a party of hens at the pottery, is running twice in 2008 - March 15-16th and September 27-28th.

Raku Kiln Building added to courses

We've added a raku kiln-building course to the weekend roster. This year, it was based on a day during the 5-day summer school, but that proved too tight on time, so it's being opened up to a full weekend next summer (August 2-3).

The course included construction of raku kilns by 4 students from ceramic fibre, wire, ceramic buttons and not much else. These take about 4-5 hours to make and the size is about 22 inches high by 20 inches diameter. The cost of materials this year, including the kiln shelf and props, but without the raku burner, was about €200. The burner comes from a builders merchants - it's a roofing torch for melting tar - and with the gas regulator, costs another €150 - but you don't need to buy this till after the course.

Anyway, the kilns are light enough to put in the boot of your car (once they've cooled down!) and they last for ages, provided they're stored indoors.

The weekend course includes making up your own raku glazes and trying out the kilns

180 workshop participants during Kinsale Arts Week

The 2007 Kinsale arts festival was by far the biggest yet. 87 projects including international theatre, great concerts, poetry and literature, comedy, rock pop and jazz, loads of street activities and more artists in the artist trail than ever before. The 2008 festival runs from July 12-20th by the way (check http://www.kinsaleartsweek.com/) and we're going to strengthen the visual arts elements again.

Anyway, Kinsale Pottery hosted drop-in classes in pottery, drawing, mosaics and childrens art, and we had upwards of 180 students during the week! On Friday, we hosted The Hands On Experience, which involved demostrations and displays from all the teachers in Hands On West Cork (http://www.handsonwestcork.com/). The Artist Trail bus called twice a day, with up to 18 passengers, to see the gallery and buy some art. A great week here.....

Bronzing in the rain

This summer, we ran the first bronze casting workshop at Kinsale Pottery. Helle Helsner, a specialist in neolithic bronze casting techniques - including the use of horse dung and terracotta to make molds, took five students through their paces on a rainy weekend, and everyone produced more than one small bronze sculpture, cast from black wax. The hard work - filing and burnishing the pieces - came after the most exciting moments - pouring the bronze and opening the casts.

Helle often runs this as a three-day course, but for the pottery, two was enough to produce the work. The course runs again on May 24-25th 2008 and we can hope that the rain won't interfere next time