My Journey

For me, working with clay allows me to be present in the moment and quiet my mind. I can throw pieces or carve designs into clay for hours and forget about the stresses of the outside world.

I was never very creative; I was always extremely busy with schoolwork and lots of other activities, always striving to do everything to the best of my abilities.

This all started to change when I was 15. I started becoming overwhelmed by everything in my life and found every day a struggle. This resulted in me leaving school early, before my GCSEs, which was very unexpected as I had always been very academic.

The following years continued to be a struggle. I was diagnosed as Autistic two years later, in 2018, and continued to experience ongoing feelings of anxiety and depression.

In 2020 I reached out to Mind, the mental health charity, to see if they could help and it transpired that they ran a local pottery group, which I attended occasionally. I enjoyed spending time focused on something creative and not worrying about life. After a while I wanted to expand my knowledge and try wheel throwing, so in 2022 I went on a throwing course at Cardiff Pottery Workshops and it has all grown from there.

I purchased a wheel and a kiln just days after the course and have been making pottery on my farm ever since.

It has been a steep learning curve trying to work things out by myself, with a new mistake around each corner. But it has helped me to accept that things don’t always go to plan, to take a breath and try again and to really appreciate my successes.

I have learnt to love the skill and creative freedom that working with clay provides. The technical elements satisfy my inquisitive brain, whilst the wide expanse of creative options has taught me to find joy in making. I will often spend some time just going with the flow and trying out new ideas as they come to me, which is a novel ideas for someone who has always had a plan.

There’s nothing quite like starting with a simple ball of clay and being able to make whatever you want with it.  When you step back and look at what you have created there is an immense sense of pride, knowing that you have made that from scratch.