top of page
Developing Your Creative Practice.
Arts Council England Research Grant
2024- 2025 ​
Mentoring with Eva Masterman, Owen Griffiths, & Lucy Elmes
​
​
(Completing in May 2025)
Eva Masterman
Photo from Scottish Sculpture Workshop : Building the Clay Commons 2024
​
Our work Together
I am honored to be mentored by ceramic artist and educator Eva Masterman, whose commitment to community-oriented, socially engaged practice resonates profoundly with my own work. Through her initiative, The Clay Commons, Eva has demonstrated how clay can serve as a powerful catalyst for building collective bonds, facilitating dialogue, and fostering equitable forms of creative education. This aligns closely with my background in socially engaged ceramics, where I also aim to use clay as a means to bring people together, spark conversation, and reimagine the role of art in our communities.
Eva’s multifaceted approach—embracing sculpture, theatre, and ceramic pedagogy—complements my desire to explore the transformative potential of clay beyond traditional gallery spaces. Working alongside her offers me an invaluable opportunity to deepen my understanding of collaborative art practices, while refining my own projects to more effectively address social and cultural challenges. Through this mentorship, I hope to expand my methods of engagement, strengthen the impact of my work, and continue to advocate for clay as a tool for positive social change.
About Eva Masterman
Eva Masterman graduated from Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art in 2016. She has exhibited widely across the U.K. and abroad, including two solo-shows at the William Bennington Gallery, London and at the Clayarch Museum in South Korea. In 2017, she was selected for a residency exchange with Camden Arts Centre and Arts Initiative Tokyo, Japan. She also co-runs social outreach art collective, Collective Matter, and is currently based in Newcastle Upon Tyne where she is the Norma Lipman Fellow in Ceramics. Her practice currently investigates intersections between sculpture, theatre, and ceramic pedagogy.
The Clay Commons
A podcast about community ceramics and clay as a force for good. Clay Commons is a six-part podcast hosted by artist and educator Eva Masterman, co-produced by AiAi Studios. Each episode presents conversations with teachers, artists, activists and community leaders, all using clay as a tool to build community. Focusing on the UK and America, Clay Commons explores the rise of a diverse movement of community ceramic practices, and investigates how clay can play a central role in creating alternative solutions to arts education and new systems of value in society.
Lucy Elmes
Photo from Rame Projects
Our Work Together
I am fortunate to have the guidance of Lucy Elmes, Head of Curatorial Programmes for Take A Part in Plymouth, as I refine the organizational structures needed for the next phase of my large-scale national projects. Lucy’s deep experience in socially engaged art—connecting communities and artists to co-create transformative work—has been invaluable in helping me prototype and test new frameworks that address social, economic, and political challenges through creative collaboration.
Through her leadership at Take A Part and her extensive background curating ambitious, community-focused initiatives, Lucy offers critical insights into how these projects can achieve both meaningful engagement and long-term sustainability. Working together has sharpened my understanding of how to balance creative vision with sound infrastructure, ensuring that my practice can grow while maintaining a strong ethic of care and empowerment.
About Lucy Elmes
Lucy Elmes (née Rollins) is a Contemporary Art Curator and Producer based in Plymouth. She leads the Curatorial Programme at Take A Part, strengthening the socially engaged art sector by connecting communities with artists to co-create impactful projects. With an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London, Lucy’s expertise spans national and international initiatives, with a particular focus on using art to address social, economic, and political contexts. Lucy is also a Director of Flock South West and Rame Projects, and a Non-Executive Director of Pollenize. She co-founded CAMP and led the Making Things Happen working group, shaping the programme during its formative years. Her ongoing research explores how creative processes can empower communities and tackle critical societal issues. Currently, Lucy is curating I hadn’t finished talking to you yet, a residency and event series exploring grief and loss through art. Featuring roving talk events and national residencies at Rame Projects, the programme combines artists and artworks with workshops and discussions, offering audiences a space for collective reflection on themes of grief and death.
Owen Griffiths
Our work Together
I am thrilled to be guided by Owen Griffiths, whose socially engaged practice underscores the value of long-term, collaborative relationships with communities. Through his work—co-designing gardens, creating feasts, and developing durational projects—Owen demonstrates how art can cultivate lasting frameworks of care, equity, and empowerment. His commitment to “slowing down time” and building trust aligns powerfully with my own desire to nurture sustainable, community-focused art that deeply invests in the people and places it touches.
Under Owen’s mentorship, I aim to refine my approach to expansive, long-term projects that thoughtfully integrate both creativity and care. By embracing his methods of local engagement and collaborative processes, I hope to strengthen my own capacity for responsible facilitation and to reinforce the belief that art can be a transformative vehicle for social justice, dialogue, and healing.
About Owen Griffiths
Owen Griffiths is an artist, workshop leader and facilitator. Using participatory and collaborative processes, his socially engaged practice explores the possibilities of art to create new frameworks, resources and systems.
This takes many forms, but includes reclaiming and rethinking events, rituals and spaces of dialogue through creating gardens, codesigning spaces, and making feasts. Griffiths explores climate, landscape, urbanism, social justice, food systems and pedagogy, creating projects and events that prepare us for the work of the future.
He is interested in working locally and in long-term dialogue with communities and projects. These long-term conversations make a case for slowing down time, rethinking the expectations around participation to model new collaborative methods which raise questions around equity, empowerment and sustainability.
Griffiths was a British Council Fellow in 2014, working with artists and community growing networks including the Edible Schoolyard and LA Community Garden Council amongst others across California. In 2016 he was awarded a Creative Wales Ambassador role by Arts Council of Wales, researching land use, community and participation through placemaking, food systems and regeneration. Griffiths has also developed projects with 14-18 NOW, National Museum Wales, Cultural Olympiad, Transport for Wales, Natural Resources Wales, HM Prison Services as well as local authorities, schools and housing associations.
From 2017-2019 he was co-director of Gentle/Radical, a community arts and social justice project based in Cardiff. He leads long-term projects including GRAFT: A Soil Based Syllabus with National Waterfront Museum of Wales, Hinterlands Wales, The Trebanog Project with Artes Mundi, and Land Dialogues with Glynn Vivian Art Gallery. He is an associate artist with Peak Art in the Black Mountains and Taliesin Arts Centre Swansea University. Griffiths graduated from the School of Walls and Space at The Royal Danish Academy of the Arts, Copenhagen. He is a member of the Social Sculpture Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University.
In 2020 Griffiths developed Ways of Working, a community participation platform and company in order to work in ways he feels are urgent; speaking to climate crisis, localism and radical collaborative projects.
bottom of page