From Riverbed to Dinning Table

Children from Hillyfield in the Park Primary School were joined by Creative Technologist and Engineer, Jude Pullen, who, with D&T Teacher extraordinaire, Mr Davy, embarked on a hands-on journey of 'Riverbed Clay to Ceramics on your Table'. 

The children’s learning journey began with them travelling to a local river in London, carefully selecting sediment from the river bank (in their wellies and waterproofs) to choose the river clay with the right 'plasticity'. This was dubbed 'the sausage test' - and kids gleefully collected a few kilos of the squishy stuff, which they learned to differentiate from mud, from the River Ching. 

Over the subsequent weeks, the children formed a ‘Clay Committee’ who gathered to process the clay. They removed grass, twigs, other foreign objects, rubbish, bugs, and more - before drying, re-hydrating, and watched the river clay transform, step-by-step, into a custard-like 'slip' of liquid clay.

They worked hard to continue the process, with Mr Davy skillfully orchestrating the classroom experience and guiding the children in their learning process. The slip was dehydrated on plaster slabs or ‘bats’, to achieve the right firmness to be modelled by hand. 

The kids were now free to sculpt, ‘throw’, pinch and squeeze their hand-made clay into whatever functional ware and/or artistic sculptures they liked. Their proud creations were then fired in the school's kiln, and glazed with food-safe glazes so they could be used at home for the years to come.

They would also serve as a reminder of the complex provenance of how the items in our lives often start from raw materials, but require extraordinary skills and refinement to be consumer goods. The ‘specialness’ of the ceramics they made ‘from scratch’ also serves as a counterpoint to conspicuous consumption, and throw-away culture, which both the school and Jude are keen to give those involved in the project pause for thought.

A few months later, (from the filming of this video), the remarkable project was picked up by a leading London creative exhibition, Craftworks, and the children's work was exhibited alongside leading UK artists. Needless to say, the children were in awe of the professional artists, and of course the adults were charmed to see 7-8 year olds gaining such a formative insight into the world of art as a profession.

By happy coincidence, the school is a few hundred meters from the famous house, gallery, and gardens of William Morris, whose maxim "have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful" is also in harmony with the spirit of this project, over a hundred years later.
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