Full-time pottery courses return to Scotland
By eds@makingthingswork on 04 July 2024
Edinburgh Design School has been approved by the Scottish Qualifications Authority to deliver two new full time Pottery qualifications aimed at teaching and supporting the next generation.
In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s pottery and ceramics began disappearing from mainstream publicly funded education.
This was in part due to the rush towards digitisation, a trend towards thinking that craft was outdated and a response to budgetary pressures in schools colleges and universities. Edinburgh Design School was founded in 2012 by Alex Gunn to reverse that trend.
Early years
The school started small in 2012 with only a couple of classes and a tiny number of students and grew slowly from there. A year or so later EDS became a Approved teaching centre with the Scottish Qualifications Authority and started to deliver a range of certificate and non certificate pottery courses.
These courses focused on teaching the Hand building and Wheel throwing pottery fundamentals at different levels of progression so students could learn and advance in stages. Alex had taught and managed extensively in college education designing and managing course teams and departments so it seemed logical to develop a series of beginners level courses at different degrees of difficulty so students could progress as their skills developed.
Pottery teaching outside of the art college model was still really new in Scotland but by 2015 the pace had picked up and we had enough students who had developed to the stage of proficiency where they could work independently in a studio developing their skill and ideas.
They were clamouring for a space so Alex Founded the Edinburgh Ceramics Workshop, a lofty name for the tiny space at the back of the studio. Both the design school classes and the ECW workshop grew so we moved to larger studios at Abbeymount just before lockdown.
Steady Progress
The teaching school and Workshop began to develop and attract a wider range of students and practitioners eager to further their study and to experiment with clay.
We began to attract more experienced teachers looking for an exciting place to develop their teaching practice and the quality of our learning and teaching continued to gain in reputation. We started to offer more specialist workshop and talks so we could give students access to leading ceramicists. We have had workshops and talks from some of the UK’s leading practitioners and also hosted in person visits from Mat Katz from the USA and Hyder Daupota, a leading Islamic tile maker and educator from Pakistan.
It was always our dream to kickstart pottery education back into the main stream and although our class and workshop model works well and we have lots of potters now who have founded their own professional studios, we are keen to speed this up. To make that happen we have been Approved by SQA to teach a two year Higher National Diploma in Art & Design ceramics underpinned by a single year Foundation course which gives students the technical skills and creative thinking needed to join the higher level HND. We plan to deliver these course from September 2024. These professional level courses aim to teach the new generation of studio potters and ceramic sculptors here in Scotland.
If you are interested in studying with us or offering a talk and workshop then drop Alex an email.
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