FiredUp4
Putting Clay
in the Hands of Young People
FiredUp4 is a charity started by The WOOM Foundation in partnership with Kate Malone – who serves as Ceramic Ambassador – and OnSide Youth Zones across the United Kingdom. The charity aims to place “clay in the hands of young people.” Raising funds through grants, direct contributions, and an auction of pottery pieces made by many of the United Kingdom’s most recognized crafts people hosted by Maak Contemporary Ceramics, the charity enables the construction of pottery studios in OnSide Youth Zones throughout the country.
The youth zones are centers that provide “local young people aged between 8 and 19, or up to 25 with a disability, affordable access to high-quality sports, arts, and leisure facilities and activities, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.” OnSide has supported 50,000 young people who are members across the network of 14 Youth Zones in the UK.
Kate Malone says she got involved with FiredUp4 because she was essentially “fed up with the lack of clay education in schools.” Kate notes she was extremely lucky, in this sense: when young, she had the good fortune to be introduced to ceramics by ‘brilliant’ art department staff teaching at a government school. The luck continued as government grants supported her continued studies through her polytechnic years to her three years of study culminating in a Master of Arts (M.A.) at the Royal College of Art at the age of 28. Kate wanted young people “to have the same opportunity.”
To realize this dream and give something back, Kate called upon her ceramic contemporaries to donate work to an auction that would fund a program to teach ceramics to young people. The response has been significant. To date, the program has raised a quarter of a million
pounds – funding the installation of five
ceramic studios OnSide after school clubs in the UK (OnSide is a national youth charity that champions youth work and believes all young people deserve access to opportunities.). A third auction will be held in October 2023, with the hope it will fund three more studios with equipment and training. Over 5,000 students have been trained through these pottery studios.
Malone sees this work as getting the whole field of ceramics “behind a project to place small hands in soft clay.” Kate believes there are many benefits to be gained by such a simple act: there is “the immediate entering of the person and the pleasure into the soft clay, instilling the sense of magic in the process for the young person.” And once the final piece is fired and finished, ‘the sense of achievement’ for a young person is strengthened. Finally there are entrepreneurial project possibilities, as the studios are in the extraordinary Onside charity environment.
The importance of such environments cannot be underestimated. Over the course of time, OnSide has conducted a number of studies that demonstrate how these centers and studios help with skills development and personal esteem – as well as reduce crime and instill greater public pride. As a result, local councils are now seeing the value of such spaces and committing more land and resources to their construction. No wonder Kate is so revered. As she says, her public projects are always “for community about community with community.” Here you have a real person of note who engages the community in real things that facilitate the “spark” of creativity – which she sees in all people – becoming reality!
Some artists participating in the 2023 auction inlude: Edmund de Waal, Alison Britton, Vicky Lindo, Felicity Aylieff, and Barnaby Barford.
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