These recipes give ingredients and methods to creatively engage diverse audiences with clay and ceramics collections. Together, the recipes form an easy to use, adaptable engagement toolkit for those wanting to use clay and ceramics in a social and educational contexts.
Five cultural partners, based across Europe, developed Cooking with Clay together. Engaged in a year-long creative process to produce the toolkit, sharing approaches to practice, stories and a real passion for the material.
Why a cookbook for clay?
‘Food and clay’ is a theme that connects different countries and cultures. Eating meals on ceramic plates and often cooking using ceramic pots. Through sharing everyday dining and cooking traditions discoveries were made about different cultures identities and the similarities shared.
Cooking with Clay presents seven recipes to the user, with varying degrees of difficulty. These can be used in a wide range of settings for example, a classroom, gallery or workshop.
The cookbook was designed to be used with a diverse range of participants. The recipes enable diverse voices, stories and backgrounds to be represented through the work made or experiences gained. A participant’s age, ethnicity, cultural background or disability is an asset and not a barrier to an engagement with clay and the design of this toolkit is to be accessible for all.
The toolkit has been designed for museums and gallery learning managers, teachers and socially engaged artists, but we would encourage anyone interested in clay and ceramics to use it.
Cooking with Clay is a part of the Ceramics and its Dimensions project. It was produced alongside other publications, exhibitions, activities, research and events, which encourage a meaningful engagement with clay as a material and ceramic objects.
The partners in the Education module were Stoke-on-Trent Museums, The British Ceramics Biennial (BCB), Porzellanikon, Selb, Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague, and International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza.
Katie Leonard is one of the Cookbook's authors. Katie is director of The Clay School at the British Ceramics Biennial and the Award leader for the PGCE Secondary Art and Design at Staffordshire University. Katie is a champion for students and teachers alike and she is a member of NSEAD.
Other authors/chefs include: Dena Bagi, Amanda McDonagh, Bryony Jackson, Monica Gori, Dario Valli, Vladimíra Sehnalíková , Hana Havlujová , Claudia Meißner
Download the Cooking with Clay here
