A Pottery Research Project with the Centring Pottery Group at Beamish Museum's Health and Wellbeing Team and Chilli Studios Mental Health Arts Charity. Members of each group were paired and exchanged things about themselves with one another using design probes - which inspired each person in the making of a dinner setting for their project partner (a dinner plate, side plate, bowl and drinking vessel). At the end of the twelve weeks, they finally met in person to exchange the pottery made for each other and to share a meal together. Throughout the 12 weeks of the project, we saw the value in reciprocal gift-giving to an unknown other. The opportunities for speculation about the individual, the growing 'relationship' between two former strangers, the care taken in making the tableware and the growing sense of reassurance that the 'other' was also someone who might make mistakes but would still value care and effort in the making process.
We found that the different groups could be introduced to each other at a distance and with limited self-disclosure in such a way as to create a strong sense of commitment, (and for some compassion and care) that infused any making or creative process and resulted in personal growth. A principal project value came from the way that participants turned their social gaze outwards rather than inwards and saw themselves as people who had the potential to hold others in their thoughts and to give them a sustained period of, albeit remote, care, manifested through the making process - and the agency to change the lives of others in some small way, but were also protected in the sense that a failed glaze or flaw in the making process became surmountable, when considered in terms of the larger context of reciprocal exchange and the overwhelming sense of connectedness that came from the project as a whole.
