Women’s Wild Pottery

We gather at Beltane, a vibrant and potent moment in the cycle of the year, and the time of ancient fire festivals

This two-day woodland workshop has emerged from being the caretaker, since 2018, of a number of genuine prehistoric female figurines. It’s been an inspiring and creative experience that has enriched a long-standing interest in Palaeolithic art and stimulated a lot of reflection about the feminine, about being a woman.

Our ancestors (and some peoples in the world still today) understood life to be a feminine force, embodied through the human female form, but also expressed through plants, animals, the waters and the earth itself. These forms also reflect our personal experiences of being a woman, the various expressions of who we are.

By connecting with an inner sense of this generative principle, we reflect on how we express it in the world. Perhaps more than ever we feel a need for nurturing our feminine energy and wisdom, to help redress the imbalances we see; to feel more resilient, resourced, effective.

On these immersive, hands-on days on the land together, two of the prehistoric figurines will be with us. We’ll journey inwards to explore and connect with what the feminine principle may mean to each of us. It’s also an opportunity to connect more deeply with whatever phase of womanhood we find ourselves in.

Keeping this information close, we’ll work directly with the elements, using clay dug from Mother Earth, making it into a form that expresses our experience of the timeless feminine. I will offer any technical assistance needed to support you in the making. On the second day we’ll give our makings to the fire, in the same way our distant ancestors would have done, a fire which will transmute them into ceramic.

It can be very meaningful to make pottery in a circle of women. Perhaps because of our innate connection to the earth, perhaps because we have a sense of the intense transformation that the body of the clay goes through in the fire. Making with the clay in this way we tap into a lineage of ancestors: intimate with earth and fire, immersed in nature with the trees and birds around us.

There will be support for you to integrate what you create.  And we’ll look at how you can continue the connection with what you’ve made, to have a living relationship with it that’s meaningful to you.

My intention is for this to be a grounded, supportive and heartful time. No previous experience of pottery is needed, just an open mind and the desire to connect.

Practicals
May 1 / 2 (Fri/Sat)
10.30am-5pm both days
£290
We’ll be tucked away in private woodland on Dernwood Farm Nr Heathfield, East Sussex. A simple but hearty and delicious organic vegetarian lunch (cooked on the campfire) is provided. We’ll also have a kettle on the fire with tea, biscuits and fresh fruit available all day.

To Book: please get in touch and include a few words about your interest in attending