Included in About:-
Gill Butler - Resident Artist
Social Mission Statement
Pottery for Health and Wellbeing
Gill Butler - Resident Artist
My name is Gill Butler and I run ‘Under the Sun Studio’ in Par, Cornwall I was born in Fowey and was brought up, and went to school, in St Austell. I trained as an Arts, Crafts and Design teacher in Cheshire and taught in Bedfordshire for several years before returning to Cornwall. I gained more knowledge of ceramics in a studio in Hampshire and here in Cornwall. I retired from teaching in schools in 2003, bought my kiln, and ran sessions from home. Now I’m teaching in my studio instead.
I took on my present studio in Moorland Road,, (rented from Par Bay Community Trust) at the rear of the Cornubia building, in April 2021. I run it as a ‘community pottery’ where anyone can book to come along to a morning or afternoon session to make or paint pottery. I always have a good stock of ready-to-paint items on the shelf. People can come along either with ideas of their own, or I can set projects for them to do in our Pot and Chatter sessions on a Monday or Wednesday morning. I have regulars who come along most weeks, sometimes more than once, and they find it very therapeutic. I also get ‘drop-ins’ from time to time. The sessions are social occasions, where everyone sits around a central table, and there are free tea and coffee facilities.
I cater for children and adults, individuals and group bookings, and am accessible for wheelchair users. I have an outside space which we can use, weather permitting, I also run workshops in the Community Garden, just around the corner.
I can, and have, run workshops, if requested, in schools, community center's, halls, and at festivals etc. I have taken part in various community projects.
I believe in Pottery as Therapy, and my sessions have helped people over the last year and will continue to do so. During one of the shorter Covid ‘lockdowns’ I was able to run as a support group, helping people through a very difficult time.
Everything that comes out of my kiln is photographed and posted on our various local Facebook pages and some of our Pot and Chatter project photos are posted on the Great Pottery Throwdown Facebook page, especially the projects inspired by the TV programme. You can of course find us on our own Under the Sun Studio Facebook page.
Social Mission Statement
- To be inclusive, committed to being accessible to as many people as possible.
- To inspire positive change and achievement in people and the community.
- I believe that everyone should have access to an exceptional, personalized creative space that enables them to be happy and successful in an ever-worrying world.
- To create a vibrant space that improves life and inspires our community.
- To support people to achieve their potential through a variety of creative activities.
- To break the misconception that one needs a thorough knowledge of art in order to fully enjoy, appreciate and create it.
- To create a positive social environment.
- To enhance the mental wellness of my clients.
- To improve the quality of life in our community.
- To engage people in the adventure of creativity.
- To make people feel good about their creative ability.
- To develop simple and beautiful solutions in the world of ceramics.
- To foster health & wellness through pottery, so people can live an inspired and creative life.
- To inspire and spread creative ideas to make a positive impact in the community where we live and work.
- To keep prices low so that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.
Pottery for Health & Wellbeing
(Pottery Painting and Working with Clay.) Inclusive, Intergenerational, Relaxing Creative, Fun, Inexpensive, Everlasting
Pottery is used as a tool for health and wellbeing, where the therapeutic aim is given more importance than the artistic aim.People do not need to have artistic ability or special talent to participate in any sort of art and people of all ages including children, teens, and adults can benefit from it.
The art of pottery is also relaxing. It’s very meditative. You have to let go and give in to the unpredictability of it. You can go in with an idea of what you want to make, and the clay doesn’t want to do that.
You feel the soft clay in your hands.......You smell the earth & your mind relaxes. Also painting or making while listening to music helps our brains and bodies relax.
The primary goal is not to create a perfect work of art, but to utilise pottery art as a means of expressing the inner self .. It is therefore important to let the imagination flow without focusing on the artistic result.
The goal of pottery ‘therapy’ is to improve the physical, emotional, and spiritual status of individuals and it makes it possible for the individual to express his/her inner thought which he/she is unable to express through words. It has a number of therapeutic effects such as:
• providing confidence
• creative awakening
• a sense of freedom
• managing emotions
• stress management
• reduction of anxiety
In other words all over wellbeing.
Exploring and experimentation – Pottery helps you to express your creativity, which is essential to expand who we are and how we connect to ourselves and our environment. It’s a good way for people of all ages to explore the things they can do. You may be more creative than you think, besides there’s no right or wrong way to participate in pottery.
Pottery is ideally used in many therapeutic areas such as:
- Working with children or adults with learning disabilities
- Working with children suffering from behavioral or social problems at school or at home
- Working with the elderly
- Working with patients with severe diseases(eg cancer)
- Working with people experiencing mental health problems
- Working with individuals suffering from a brain injury
- Working with children or adults who have experienced a traumatic event
A typical session of pottery for wellbeing The helping artist accompanies the individual in their creative pottery work without making interference. It is a real process of allowing the individual to evolve at their own pace over the various sessions and different artistic productions of pottery. This is not to say that help cannot be given.
The therapeutic potential of pottery for depression is increasingly being recognised by the mental health community More and more health experts are starting to embrace pottery and other forms of art-making as a crucial element in maintaining one’s wellbeing.
Keep calm and carry on !!!!!
Working with clay integrates mental, emotional, and kinesthetic brain functions. It’s a full-on experience, and a great way to get out of a slump.
And at the end, you’ll have a creation that’ll no-doubt add mood-boosting character to your Zen den.
It has long been accepted that being creative is a wonderful way to ease stress. It gets the mind to focus on something else aside from whatever it is that is worrying you or stressing you out.
When you are being creative, you are using a different part of your brain to when you are merely sitting there stressing. It's as if those issues melt into the background - simply because your brain does not allow them to come to the front at this point.
Mindfulness has a number of actual benefits to both body and mind. It is known to bring down your blood pressure and heart rate. This act of focusing your mind leads to a reduction in anxiety as well as the level of hormones and chemicals that are released by the brain when you are stressed.
It's not what you make that is important but more the process that you go through when doing so..
You will tend to make mistakes as you create something or you discover that your initial ideas just don't work out the way you intended. Thanks to this, you will learn to become more resilient as you seek to tackle things from a different perspective until you reach your end goal. As they say, there are times where life just doesn't work out the way you hoped it would, but you can still achieve things if you don't worry about it.
Overall, pottery and meditation are perfect for one another.
There's no need to be able to produce some stunning piece of artwork or the most elaborate pot ever seen. Enjoyment of the act of producing something and enjoying the way in which it has helped you to just calm your mind, brings stress levels down.
© Copyright. All rights reserved.