13: Growing a Thriving Community

Introduction to NSEKA 360

0:00Welcome to NSEKA 360, a podcast that amplifies and uplifts the voices of the ceramic community. I'm Edith Garcia for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts. Visit nseka.net to learn more about how membership cultivates a clay community and shapes content and opportunities for the field. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook for the latest information about NSEKA.

Conversation Introduction

0:30Hi, this is Alex Pat, one of NSEKA's student directors at large. Today, we're featuring a conversation on growing a thriving community that was moderated by Kami Clamaco and features Holly Hanasian, Dallas Rokemore, and Heather May Erickson. The group talks about building communities through non-profit programming, education curriculum, and project-based social practice.

1:02This conversation was recorded in person at the 2024 NSEKA Coalescence Conference in Richmond, Virginia. Special thanks to the Brickyard Network for co-producing this episode and supporting podcasting in the ceramics community. If you enjoyed this podcast, please support NSEKA's programming by donating at www.nseka.net slash donate.

The Ceramic Companion Podcast

1:26Welcome to the live recording of The Ceramic Companion. My name is Kami Clamaco and I'm the host and I'm thrilled to be doing this. And thanks so much to Ben Carter for asking me. Probably he was like, I don't know what I'm going to get. And you know, let's just hope for the best is what I'm hoping for. I have a brand new podcast called The Ceramic Companion. I literally put out one episode

1:57and then went on vacation. So if you haven't listened to it yet, it's on Spotify and iTunes. But prior, I had a podcast, I still have a podcast with co-host Gustav Hamilton called The Ceramics Podcast. So you'll be shocked to know that The Ceramic Companion is about friendship and clay. So I think that's inherent in the name that we could figure that out. Today, we're going to be talking about

Growing a Thriving Community

2:23growing a thriving community. And when I started The Ceramics Podcast two years ago, I had no idea that I would be building a community. I just was like in my studio alone working, thinking I wanted to make a podcast that was just a little lighter and try to put some humor to it and just talk to people who are also alone in their studios. And so what happened was people started listening and then people started talking to each other about the podcast. And so the people that we had

2:55on the podcast or even talked about on the podcast, collectors would start buying their work off their website. And then so it supported a lot of artists. And then I found out just recently that it inspired people to start their own podcast. So I was so excited to hear that. And then also people became roommates from listening to the podcast. And I think that we probably made some love connections. I'm not sure, but I'll let you know as soon as I get some confirmation on that. But today,

3:27I'm so excited to be with Heather May Erickson. Yeah, please. Say. Oh, hi. How you doing? And Dallas Rockmore. Hello, hello, hello. How y'all doing? Holly Hanesian. Yeah, you're fine. You're good. You're good. I said it 17 times.

3:46We're all going to talk about like, we all, well, mostly them, not really me. I gave you, that was my credentials about growing a thriving community. So, but they are like experts in this

Art 180 and Community Engagement

3:57field. So why don't we get right to it? Dallas, I would love for you to talk about 180. I'm a professional artist that doubles as a program manager at Art 180, which Art 180 is a little bit down the block from here, probably about two to three blocks down, probably just go out here and make a right on Marsha and come down and see us. But what I do there is put together these fantastic programs, y'all. So it's like being an artist and being able to work with youth and be like, let's put this together so something you can learn from and have this great experience.

4:27That's pretty much what I do. And then on the side of that, I love to draw. So I'm always drawing and creating my own art as well. Art 180 is an art-based organization where we kind of meet, you know, these things that the youth deal with with art. Art is like the vehicle. So we do programs and after school, we do programs at our place. We also do workshops and all type of things. And it's also a collective. So it's one of those things where not only are we working with youth, we're working with adults as well. And once these adults and youth come into our community, then they're part of the collective. So now they're a resource. So we just try to get into the community here in Richmond

5:01and just let everybody know that art is that vehicle that's going to meet your traumas and things that you're dealing with, as well as a practice that can also, you know, speak to you as a meditation. It's just something that answers to me. Creativity creates the solutions. Because when you're out of the mechanical mind, now you enter the creative mind and then you get answers. And Art 180 does that. And then with kids, because you work with a lot of teams. I do. What, like, talk about how you exceeded an idea through this completion. Like, what kind of programs

5:33for how do you, what do you, why do we? Yeah, yeah. I got you. So what's cool about it too, just I'll say the first thing is cool about being an artist that you meet all these cool friends, right? So I came into Art 180 last July. So when I came on, I was like, I got all these cool artist friends. So now I can recruit them to teach. So I had a good friend that did screen printing. And I had another friend that did graphic design. So I was like, hey, guys, I got these teams that come to the center. They want to learn how to, you know, wear cool

6:05apparel and design their own apparel. So I called my friend Nate, called my friend Will, put them together, created a screen printing class. So now every Thursday night, I got about 14, 15 teens that come and they learn how to screen print. And also what's cool about the programs that we do at Art 180 is that we kind of bake in these five guidelines to make sure it's not just a program. We want it to be more of an experience. So the five guidelines is creative development, social entrepreneurship, connecting self to others, self-actualization, and then I'm forgetting one more.

6:39Holistic health. So we try to include these five guidelines in all our programs. So for instance, the screen printing program, before they even start doing anything, they're going to get in a group and talk about what they're doing and kind of like, you know, how they're feeling, you know, just kind of get that togetherness first. Then you're going to probably do an activity where you're working together so you can connect yourself to others. Then you're going to do type of activities where maybe you're not comfortable with this medium that you're working with, but you're going to learn from it so you get your creative development through that. And then when it comes to social

7:10entrepreneurship, hey, you can take this back to your neighborhood and you can start selling sweatshirts. So if you want to sell prints, now you've gained this skill that can make you some money. Maybe you can make somebody else some money or, you know, just do it for fun. I have a cool art practice. And then the final part is the self-actualization, which is when you came in there, you didn't know how to do this. You had these ideas. And then now after this class, you walk out of this class with, oh man, I had an ideal about a cool sweatshirt. I created it and now I can rock it and wear it around and people see, this is mine, you know? So, so that's the example that I have.

7:44That's, that's pretty amazing. Can you tell us like a success story about someone that was in the program that kind of went out into the world? There's so many. I'll say we had a summer residency and this summer residency was based around self-portraits. And we had one particular girl that was kind of like super talented. We really didn't know how talented she was. And she kind of worked through this program. And by the end, the piece that she made was so amazing. She kind of did like a painting of herself.

8:17It was like a mirror, but she had herself kind of drawing herself in a mirror. But this girl was probably like 16, 17 years old, amazing artists. But to see her get that exposure. And then we had an art show where her, you know, her art was featured along with her classmates from this residence. And just to see what that feels like when people come to this art show, see your work up there, see this artist statement, just to get that experience. And just see that and realize that, oh man, art is a, can be a real thing and not just something that, you know, I'm just doing in my

8:50room, which that's cool too. But this is something like, if you really like it, it'll work for you. Thanks so much. Oh, no problem. Heather, you tell us a little bit about yourself.

Pride Pots Community Conversations

9:01So my name is Heather Mae Erickson, and I teach at Western Carolina University in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge Mountains. I, do you want me to talk about the project? Well, yeah, a little bit. Yeah, I think. So the project that I'm working on for the past couple of years since COVID is called Pride Pots, Community Conversations. And basically during COVID, I was struggling on my own with my own authenticity and being myself in the classroom. And I was holding

9:33back that I was part of the queer community all of the time that I had been teaching in academia and before that, basically since I was in undergrad. And I started, I brought pots home during COVID and didn't know what the surfaces or the gist of the project was going to be. And if you've seen my work in the past, I usually make a body of work from one to three to five years now, I would say. And it changes with where I am and the narrative that's going through my mind at the time. And I started

10:08painting the pride pots and I was listening to lots of podcasts and reading and I found Brene Brown and Liz Gilbert and Glennon Doyle and definitely Hannah Gadsby. And these people started speaking to me directly, some researchers, some art historian background, and just how they were being authentic and the research that they're doing really spoke to me. And I started to figure out that I've been

10:39having these conversations about being queer with myself since I was a kid. And at that moment I said, I think this needs to be a socially engaged public practice project. And I had done a little bit of social engagement before. I worked, had Claire Toomey come and we did a project called Production Line where we made Pinch Potch with the community, thousands of Pinch Potch and had an exhibition and a factory throughout the university building that were in the Bardo Art Center. And the project

11:12really took off from COVID and I started to bring my students into the project. So basically we go out into the community. We don't expect the community to come to us at the university. A lot of times universities expect that the outsiders are going to want to come to us and, you know, we have trouble with that. And I said, you know, we need to go where the people are. And so we get out and we do these projects on campus and collaborate with partners on campus, outside of campus. And now the

11:43project began as a local project and it has turned into a global project when we go out into the communities that are interested in having us come. So we went to the Clay Studio in Philadelphia last year. We did a hands-on project with them and an exhibition. And that was amazing to bring two students on the project and then an actual parent who was a community collaborator on the project. And they were part of the panel discussion with us. And then more recently, we had an exhibition

12:13of the Pride Pots at the LSU Art Museum in Baton Rouge. And they partnered together with Baton Rouge Pride and LSU Ceramics with Andy Shaw, who curated the exhibition with me and a former student of mine actually from Alfred University, Joe Craft. And they paid, it was amazing to have LSU honor us in a way to pay for the van and the VRBO for me to bring 10 students and two professors on the project down to

12:47LSU to do an on-campus hands-on event. So when, actually we did two hands-on events, one at the Women's Center on campus and one at the Art Museum. Heather, really quick, what are they actually doing? Yeah, so what happens is, so in the studio what's happening is we have, we got lucky that we have a studio space that we call kind of the Pride Pots factory. And students are coming in and slipcasting

13:17objects. With those slipcast objects, we're then going out into the community and the community are painting pots, basically painting their stories, these pots that many hands have touched to go through the process of making, firing, underglazing by the community and then being exhibited and sharing those stories with the community through the object. And I would say the most important part of the project is the conversations and the event when we are together painting these pots. I really wanted to create a project

13:53that gave my students a kind of a platform to be able to enter into my world, but then take it on as their own. And I know that you were going to ask about a success story. Out of that, I would say, I have a lot of non-major art students who come in who are interested in ceramics, but then are coming from places like social work and recreational therapy. And I feel like I'm learning from these students because when they work

14:23with this project, they take it on as their own. It's no longer mine. It's a shared ownership project, basically. And to work with students who are working in recreational therapy and wanting to do Pride Pots events on their own without me is really a phenomenal experience to see them learning and growing through the project and finding their own footing in socially engaged public practice work. Our institution institution is a Carnegie-engaged institution, and we do a lot in the community with community

14:58engagement and service learning. And that's one of the things that I just have such a passion for now because I love the land that we are on, the Cherokee land in the Kuala Boundary area of Cullowee, North Carolina. That's, yeah, that's amazing. I was also going to ask Jaime if she's had any failure stories, and she said no. So I'm really happy for you. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I said maybe they're to come, but yeah.

15:29Yeah, she couldn't even make one up. I have a few. Okay, great. And so, Holly, please, I know you do a social practice here.

Holly Hanessian's Social Practice

15:40It's, community is embedded in your work. So, yeah, please tell us about. Sure, sure, yeah. So I've been working probably for the last 12 years doing more socially engaged work. I ended up working with the Socially Engaged Craft Collective, and I started a piece, actually, I think I met Heather May when I was. Yes, 2014, just before I got my job. Yeah, exhibiting. At the Bardo Arts Center. That's right. I started off doing a project called Touch in Real Time, where I was noticing,

16:14well, let me move backwards a little bit. I live in Tallahassee, Florida, Florida, and a lot of work to be done. Don't move away, move to. We need people to move to Florida. Anyway, so I had this project where I noticed that people were not engaging with each other, they were engaging with their phones. It was at the beginning of this time, I would see students walk across campus, not talking to each other anymore,

16:46but just talking to their phone or in tandem on their phones. It was a little, it was sort of like the beginning of AI, like we don't really know what's going to happen. And I had this moment where I wanted people to have a moment of complete engagement. So I did this project where I put a piece of clay in their hand, and my hand, and we held hands, we relaxed, and the hope was to have oxytocin released, and have this like moment in time.

17:19There was an imprint on either side of the clay, their hand and my hand, and I fired it, and it became like an artifact of the moment. So I did this across the country. I made, I think, $15,000, $3,000, something like that. I had other people hold hands with each other. It's something I think I want to go back to. I felt like that project was predominantly successful. I went on to do a couple of other projects, some successful, some not successful.

17:51My most recent project is more environmental justice, where I do live in Florida, and there's a lot of hurricanes, and there was a huge hurricane adjacent to where I live, Hurricane Michael, which really did tremendous damage, and it did not get the kind of response that Hurricane Ian recently got. And as a result of that, I wanted to work on water sustainability during a hurricane, and I partnered up with this company called Sawyer Water, which makes a, I'm not doing like a,

18:29this is not like a promo for them, just FYI. Okay, weird, but okay. Yeah, I know. But their water filters, which are mostly in the camping sector, they can clean up to 100,000 gallons of water, kind of like more than you would ever need. So it was like, I wanted to stop people using, well, this isn't possible, to reduce single plastic water bottles being used during hurricanes, because every time you walk into a big box store at the beginning of a hurricane,

19:01it's like one big mound of plastic bottled. And I want people to make that connection. Is it successful? Eh, I don't know. But I did go around the state and have people make clouds, and every time they made a cloud, they got a water filter. So the cloud curtain that's going to show up right now, every cloud is a representation of a water filter somebody got. So, I mean, there's 400 of them.

19:32It's not a big impact, but the idea exists. Okay, that's 400. Don't sell it short. It's 400 water filters, right? Right, right. So, I mean, it's... We're back on board. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, anyway, I teach at Florida State University, and I, you know, great student engagement. And for me, community is my art practice. That's how I think of myself at this point. So, yeah, I think all of your projects are sort of kind of based on that.

Advice for Starting a Community Project

20:04Dallas, do you... What kind of advice do you have for someone that wants to start something? They don't... They're good at organizing. They want to start something. They don't know what to do. Do you have any suggestions? You mean as far as starting an organization? Just as an artist? No, just like anything. Anything? Because I think, you know, I think people are like, I wish I could do something, or how do I even begin to do something? Yeah, I would say, and I'm stealing this from a friend of mine, but I would say just go out and be. I mean, if you feel like you want to do something, then just go do it, because you wouldn't even have that feeling if it's not a reality.

20:37So, that feeling that you have, I'll just tell... Just go out and do it. And just let the universe kind of fill out the spaces for you, because it happens that way. Okay. Mm-hmm. That's... Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's part of it, just the, like, being from, go from inertia to, like, action. Just start the steps. And then, Heather? Yeah, I would say be okay with failure, you know? Oh, well, you're not, so... You know, I think once you start working,

21:08that idea of work, making work, and continuing that thing, it's like if you don't push the envelope, you're not going to learn, you know, and think about the full project from the beginning to the end and what's in between and the things that are outside that that you don't even know about. I think be open to the ebb and flow of projects, and that's one of the things that I have kind of been able to,

21:38luckily with this project, is let go of some things, things that I was really uptight about so that I can, we can fail if we need to, or the students can have that space to try new things. If we don't try new things, you're not going to learn and grow. And listen. Listen to the people that you're working with. The one thing with our project is I don't tell the community partner or whoever we're working with, say, you come to me and you say, oh, we'd love to have Pride Pots come.

22:09And I say, well, you know, what is the community that you are defining? We have our own community, you know, and it's, you know, the university community, and then we grow outside of that, you know. So thinking about who you are trying to work with and not putting yourself, imposing your ideas on the other entity or entities, but listening to them and seeing how can we partner and give and take both ways so that we both are learning

22:41and growing from this experience. Exactly. Holly, what do you think? I think that if you feel impassioned to go out and work in the community, there are so many needs and there are so many ways to do it. It doesn't have to be in ceramics. I mean, I'm just saying there is a lot of need in many, many areas.

23:07How many people have worked making bowls for empty bowls? Mm-hmm. Exactly. Right? That has been going on for how long? That was one. I mean, I think of social justice, empty bowls as like one of the first projects. But really, we have been engaged with making ceramics in a community from the very beginning of working in clay as a civilization. This is not a new idea.

23:39Tell us, at 180, have you seen the kids kind of bond over the, like together as a group in ways that are unexpected? Like when you throw a bunch of people together that have this, that are like... I wouldn't even say it's unexpected because it's like, when you put these kids together, especially when you involve an art practice, it's like just natural for kids to open up because the art just makes you open up because you're doing something that you didn't think you were going to be doing. So it's kind of like you get together,

24:10you start conversating those barriers that you have and you're like, you're judging somebody. That comes down because you're so involved in what you're doing work-wise that you just open... It just makes you open up. So that connection always happens. I can't even say that when we get these youth together in these different experiences that they don't... Most of the time, they connect. I mean, you may have a few that's kind of shy and want to kind of stand to the side. I'm too cool. I don't want to do it. But they kind of phase out and kind of go into what they're doing. The people that want to connect it stays there.

24:42So from what I see, it always happens. It's the connection always happens. Art just does that. Yeah, I love when you're doing something and you're like, oh my God, you two are friends now. Yeah, exactly. Like, how did this happen? I consulted my astrologer, ChatGPT.

25:02And then I would love for you all to chime in.

Building a Community with AI Guidance

25:06I just basically put in how to build a thriving community in ceramics. And so it told me that it involves several key steps. One, create a space. Establish a physical location or online platform where ceramics enthusiasts can gather, share resources, and collaborate on projects. Okay. Fair. Easy. Two, offer resources. Provide access to kilns, wheels, clay, glazes, and other essential materials.

25:37Consider offering classes, workshops, and demonstrations to educate and inspire others. Okay, that's a little bit harder, but... Yeah.

25:46You know, doable. I like begging. So I feel like community building, there's a lot of begging involved. Heather, can you comment on begging? Have you done that? Begging for... Support. Support? Support to do the project? I mean, a lot of times you're asking for money, and how do you even... Well, one of the things, I have an endowed ceramics program, which is quite amazing. Thank you to the Susan and Randall Parrott Ward.

26:17So I haven't really had to beg too much for money. Our project actually is a fundraiser for a student who was on the project who was a student director at large last year. Thank gosh I'm not crying this year because I had to give that past master's last year, and that was pretty horrific to do that on stage. But we're a fundraiser project for a scholarship for a socially engaged MFA student who's coming in who's interested in service learning and community engagement and furthering this kind of work in the community.

26:50So asking for money is not too difficult. Within my university, my dean is... And my provost, luckily, are very supportive of a lot of the projects that I'm working on, and I've just been really fortunate to find Western Carolina University. Tell us, you know what it's like? You're in a non-profit. I'm non-profit, so me being a program manager, I don't have to mess with the money. I can kind of work on what I work on,

27:20but we have our finance guy, and he handles that, and I know it's a big thing. It's a lot of work, you know, just getting... You know, because most of our things are donations and things of that nature, so it's begging... Yeah. And I... Oh, I was going to give you a quick example. I'm sorry. No, please. So, funny story. So I was buying some materials for the ceramic class that we have at Boys and Girls Club, and this... I had ran into this one couple that came to Art 180, the first opening day at Nseka,

27:51and it was like, we're going to... I talked to her, she said, we're going to donate some money. I'm like, cool. So I'm going to buy these materials at Clayworks here, and I'm there, and I'm talking to the girl at the register. I'm telling her about Art 180 and this and that, and then she comes... The same lady, she heard me talking. She said, oh, I remember you, and she gave me a gift card for $100, but then she said, and you're going to write me a thank you note, too, to this address. I was like, oh, you know what? I will write you a thank you note. I don't mind at all. But it was just... I just say that to say it's funny, because that's kind of how it is a little bit.

28:23I don't mind it at all, but it's just kind of... That was kind of like a funny thing, I thought. I think it's complicated in terms of if you want to do bigger projects, but buy-in locally with communities, creating the community of people who can help. I think about if you have a board of directors, you don't always want to have, for example, all potters on your board. You may want to have perhaps somebody

28:55who knows accounting or all these different things. So when you think about going and getting funders, you don't really want to go back necessarily into your community, but you want to create community with people who could support you in ways that can financially help in that way. I mean, there's a lot of grant writing, which can get really irritating, and you can spend a lot of time grant writing. I mean, ChatGPT kind of does that for us now, so... Yeah, well, I don't know.

29:26I got a grant from the state of Florida, and I had to hire somebody to help me do all the evaluations at the end. So, I mean, that kind of work can be mind-numbing. But if you can find people within your community to support particular projects that are adjacent in some ways that there's a stream and a connection to them, that's really helpful. I do want to say, Heather was talking about, you know,

29:58going to these different communities. I remember with Touch in Real Time, I would contact museums and say, can I do a pop-up in front of, alongside your museum while you're doing a different thing? And they were very willing to do that, and then I would go to another place and say, oh, I just did a pop-up at Arizona State University Museum. Would you mind if I did it at your place? And I was able to string, like, 11 different activities by saying, oh, Greenwich House in New York City

30:30let me do this, you know. So, I mean, there are lots of different ways to get buy-in, and you have to be strategic. And if you don't have good grant writing skills, who in your community does? I mean, you have to look through your community and cultivate relationships. Relationships are 300% important when you're doing that kind of work. Any kind of work, really, but in our community. Number three, encourage collaboration.

31:01Foster a sense of community by encouraging members to share techniques, tips, and ideas. Organize group projects, exhibitions, and sales events to showcase members' work.

31:11Share techniques. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you're into gatekeeping, that one's not for you.

31:20But anyone, you think? Since what, sharing techniques? Yeah. I mean, we do it all the time. I mean, you know, sharing techniques, that speaks to that creative development part. You know, the more techniques you share as an artist, the more you're going to grow. And it's also going to grow that community as well, because now you're getting everybody involved, and they're just sharing. That creates community. That's what it is. Number four, networking. Facilitate networking.

31:48Opportunities for members to connect with others, as well as with professionals in the ceramics industry. I love that they, AI put ceramics in, has, like, peppered it in. It's really cute. It's really trying. It's thinking so hard. This could include hosting networking events, inviting guest speakers, or organizing field trips to ceramic studios and exhibitions.

32:10Holly, you were just kind of talking about networking and how to, like, when there's kind of like a little bit of just being brave, right? You just have to sort of, like, go out there and ask, right? Yeah. And that's hard. Yeah. My father, Haig Hanessian, could talk to anybody. And I feel like I've genetically learned, at a very young age, to talk to a rock. It's one of my superpowers. So, if you sit next to me on a plane,

32:41I'll really try to rein it in. I think that if you can cold call and come up with some, something that connects you to the person that you would be talking to is really important. And my best experiences are one-to-one experiences with somebody. If you can have a one-to-one experience and have something in common, that connection, that bridge building,

33:12is really going to become an important segue into a more successful experience for both of you. So, I mean, when you think about your time here at NSEKA, how many experiences have you already had where you're on one-to-one and having a really meaningful conversation? That's going to last a long time. So, if you can do that within the experience of trying to create a project and community and ask for money.

33:45What's that old saying? If you want to ask for money, ask for advice. And if you want to ask for advice, they'll, you know, they'll give you money or I can't remember how that goes, but... That's great advice. Yeah. I also, once we wrap up here, I totally give everyone permission this one time to go up to each other and introduce yourselves. Also, with my podcast, like, people ask me, how do you pick the people that are going to be on it? And it's, a lot of times, it's just people that introduce themselves to me or in some way or another,

34:17like, message me, you know? That's just kind of how it goes. Number five, support and mentorship. Create opportunities for experienced ceramic artists to mentor beginners and provide guidance and support as they develop their skills. I actually, I actually love this. Yeah, that one is, like, 100% of my project is that. And my classroom as well, that mentorship model. Upward, downward, you know, we're all mentoring each other. I have undergrads mentoring grad students. And we have students coming onto the project that I haven't even seriously met

34:48that have been making Pride Pots in the Pride Pots studio. And they, you know, we had, one success story that I can go back to is, we, I had, the student who's, Jenna Orbeck, who is in recreation therapy, she started Hartford Pride, the first Tennessee Hartford in Cock County, kind of scary little place, right over the border. And we did it on the side of the highway. We just kind of put up some tarps and stuff. And they had the first Pride in the small town.

35:19It was like a down-home Pride. There was like 60 people. We had comedians and everything. And we had this one person come up that was high school age and they weren't thinking about college. And they registered, they applied for college at Western, at the first Hartford Pride. And that was amazing to see one of my students begin something, recruit, and help pass on that knowledge. And now they're working

35:49in the Pride Pot studio. Okay, everyone's, we're getting a little teary. It's so sweet. Okay, number six. This is good. Promotion and marketing. Promote the community through social media, newsletters, and local advertising to attract new members and raise awareness awareness of events and activities. I feel like this is another situation where you just have to be that person that's constantly posting. Like, you will hate yourself for doing it,

36:19but it really does work. Exactly. Do you, anyone? I mean, I know for us, we're always hosting things at Art 180. I mean, we just had a thing with the Howard University, them coming, working in the community, actually coming to Art 180 and kind of seeing how art kind of can combat the school-to-prison pipeline. So, you know, you're doing things like that all the time. I mean, we're always promoting. You're right. So, it's kind of like, as I'm walking around in the city, I'm always promoting because if I see somebody, I start talking about R18

36:50and what we're doing. You know, so it's a constant thing. Like, I think I told you before when we were talking, like, you said, is this a full-time thing for you? Like, this is like 24 hours a day. You know, I'm always thinking about different ways to introduce what we do. You know, how can we help the community? You know, what does the community want and things of that nature.

37:11Yeah. I feel like how do you bring, like, how do you bring people in? You have this idea, how do you actually get people to engage? That's kind of the hardest, one of the hardest things to do. Sometimes it happens naturally. Like, you just kind of, like, put in the work and then it just sort of happens. And really, it's a lot about putting in the work, right? Yeah. I sometimes think of people as cats and dogs.

37:41Dogs will come directly to you. Cats will be, like, watching from the side, wanting to do it, but are, like, waiting to see other people do it first successfully. And so I've also spatially figured out that if I'm doing something, I need to, I mean, we go back to the beginning of this, we need to make space for them because not everybody is an extrovert, for people to be able to come to you.

38:12Exactly, yeah. Number seven, feedback and evaluation. Regularly seek feedback from members to assess their needs and preferences. I'm not interested in this, actually.

38:21Regularly seek feedback from members to assess their needs and preferences and use this information to continuously improve and evolve the community. I think in some ways that should be number one, you know what I mean? Like how I was talking about, you know, talking about going into a community and bringing your project into the community, get the feedback firsthand. What are there, what are you afraid of? What are some of the outcomes that might happen, especially with an LGBTQ project,

38:53creating a safe space, number one, is the most important thing. In my classroom, I say, you know, I want you to be, number one, your health and well-being is number one. The subject matter is number two. Unfortunately, that's the end of my AI.

39:12And I'd love to open,

Open Floor for Questions

39:14I'd love to open the floor to questions. Hi, my name's Brett with Beasley Ceramics. Thank you for doing what you're doing, all four of you. It's awesome. Thanks, Ben, for doing all this. Holly, I just wanted to say that a touch in real time was probably one of the most impactful things in my art experience life. I've handled Paul Sodner's Raku pieces. I've definitely fondled Volkis work and like really well-known pieces. I've personally made

39:45tens of thousands of pots. I've handled thousands more. I was a production potter. Blah, blah, blah. I just wanted to let you know out of all of these experiences I've had, I had my hand out extended to a stranger with a piece of porcelain in between it holding her hand. She was a stranger. I didn't know her. I was doing this weird art project with a piece of clay in my hand. We stared at each other for 20 seconds, 30 seconds, and we both started crying. It was just, this is 14 years ago, 10 years ago, or whatever it was,

40:15and it's still one of the most impactful things. I just wanted to say thanks for doing that. I appreciate it. Somebody else has a question. That's cool.

40:23That's awesome.

40:27All right, Holly.

Navigating Community in Different City Sizes

40:29That was cool. Okay, we're going to surf right into some good vibes with that. Anyone else have any questions? I want to give a shout-out to Tricia and the audience at Gulf Coast, Florida Gulf Coast University, similar to Heather May's University. It's a service-based, it has a service-based, community service-based component to its university, and it is in Florida. Just saying that.

41:01Wow. Everyone's like, yeah, but still.

41:06Well, oh, we have another question. Yeah. I was going to ask, I'm actually one of Heather May's students, I was going to ask how you define success across your different metrics, of course, working with a gallery versus working in schools or doing different community-based projects. How are you defining success when it comes to these service or community efforts? That's an excellent question. I should ask that.

41:34That's hard. I'd like to talk to that, but I just talk, so I'm going to... Oh, okay. Well, I would say that, I mean, I go to the grocery store and people are like, when are the pride pots going on sale? Where are they exhibited? When can I paint a pot? I heard that you had, you did a project with the College of Business. How come I wasn't invited? You know, things like that. So word of mouth, I think that I'm just hearing buzz and people are telling me that buzz as well.

42:05So I think that the conversation of the safe container continues.

42:13Oh, so this is a question for everyone. Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, please. The way we would define the success is I would say one of the ways is kind of going back to the mentorship that you were talking about earlier. When you see these kids that's younger, even get even younger kids excited about what they're doing and then you see them enroll in a certain experience or a different program, I think that's a really good way to kind of count the successes that we have. That's excellent. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about failure. Is that okay? Please. Okay.

42:44One of the big, one project I did, which had a lot, it had successful parts, but I don't feel like I was part of that community and I, myself and another person, went into a community and I don't feel like we were the right people to do the project. I think you have to be, you have to have, I mean, I'll use Heather May's community, you have to have like a strong and passionate feeling.

43:15It has to come from within. It has to be your community and it's something that we have to look at within ourselves and see is that my community or why am I doing that within that community? So that's a question I've had and my other question is am I making an impact? Am what I doing really changing anything? And I grapple with that a lot and I'm not going to stop doing what I do, but it is an important question

43:47to be asked.

43:49I don't really know about successes, but I do know a lot about failures. And one of the things that I do know is that if you fail at something, that doesn't mean like it's over. It just means you can either go like take that and move a different direction or take what you've learned onto the next thing. You know, I feel like I wish somebody would have said that to me a long time ago. Like you can fail. And yeah, failure is good. That's where the learning happens.

44:20If we don't fail, we're not learning, I think. Yeah.

44:25Any other questions? Yeah. Oh, Ben, up in front. Fourth, third row. Thank you. Hi, I'm Nia. Thank you for this conversation. I'm curious about if you have thoughts on how navigating and organizing community might look different in cities of different sizes. So I live in Brooklyn. I've actually taken class with Kami before. And like there are so many different studios, so many different people, so many different desires and needs and, you know, just stages in the ceramic journey

44:56as opposed to, you know, smaller towns. Like I grew up in a small town in Tennessee. Like there might be one or two studios and there's a little bit, at least from my perception, it's easier to kind of assess like what's needed when there are fewer elements or fewer variables that you're dealing with. So just curious, like your thoughts overall, like how, again, like navigating community maybe as a member of community, but also organizing it might look different depending on maybe your variables, like whether that be the city size or just like other different things that might impact it.

45:24I would say it definitely will look different when you have a larger city, like say like a Brooklyn or New York City, say like in Richmond, it's kind of a small community, but it's highly populated