Dream of Tomorrow! The Rollercoaster of Life

Dream of Tomorrow! The Rollercoaster of Life

We are Tees Valley Arts, a charity that supports people to live creative lives, based in Redcar in the North East of England. We were delighted to be asked back for a third year to host the Tonne of Clay free workshop at York Ceramics fair 2026. When we host a Tonne of Clay workshop we come up with themes to engage audiences, and this year we chose ‘The Rollercoaster of Life’ and throughout the weekend we extended this rollercoaster to run over four tables, creating a united and playful grouping of creations. Each table had a smaller theme for participants to respond to, ‘Go wild’, ‘Go party’, ‘Got lost’, ‘Good vibes’, creating some wonderful critters, adding to the overall Rollercoaster of Life!

Over the weekend we had over 300 visitors adding to our clay masterpiece, with some participants staying for hours to create sculptures, and most popping back to check how the work had grown. We had additions to the work from artists visiting and showing at the fair, Tim Copsey, Emily Stubbs, Elin Hughes and Rebecca Appleby along with many other makers took time out to create something and to hear about the project. 

We selected a few works to bring back to Redcar Palace to fire, and the rest was recycled to be used again at our next Tonne of Clay workshop in 2026. We re-use the clay multiple times throughout the year as we present versions of our Tonne of Clay at other festivals and events around the region. This year we will be developing a ceramic studio at our gallery based in Redcar which will form part of our public programme. Clay is such a powerful medium to use within education programmes, it has an immediacy, it is tactile and it helps to create conversations. We love to witness how people relax and open up when they have a ball of clay to play with, building confidence as they share there stories. It is a strategy we often use in creative networking sessions and in wellbeing sessions that we run with our communities. 

Thank you to Potclays for sponsoring this workshop again and for giving us clay and materials to be used in our community clay workshop in Redcar.