What is Open Studios?

Most of us are familiar with the concept of the open studio or open house - for instance, just this past weekend one of the largest regional collective open studio events took place in Minnesota, the St Croix Valley Pottery Tour. Opening your studio to the public is one of the best ways to engage people with your art, build community, and educate them on the ceramic process.

NCW Open Studios is inspired by a similar event started by the Australian Ceramics Association. It has been very successful across the continent, continuing to grow each year. The ACOS (Australian Ceramics Open Studios) provides the umbrella of a national event for studios, reaching out to local and national politicians to make them aware of who their ceramic artists are, and inviting their politicians, their neighbors, and their communities, into their studios to learn more, view demonstrations, and perhaps take home a handmade item. ACOS provides letter and press release templates and a logo each year, a central website and most powerfully a common date, creating unity among the ceramic community.

National Clay Week Open Studios seeks to echo this model. You can sign up here on our website, and we will send you a packet containing sample press releases, letters to send to local politicians, local schools, chambers of commerce. You can personalize these letters to your own open studio event and get your community involved. NCW encourages you to host any clay-related event you’d like on the second weekend in October to get people excited about clay. Let’s make this accessible, a national event to open our studios, whether in your home or in an art center, and invite those in who may not otherwise realize the intrinsic value of ceramics.

For more on NCW Open Studios, check out the most recent episode of Ben Carter’s Tales of a Red Clay Rambler podcast #181 with Vicki Grima of ACOS and Stephen Creech of NCW

Join the NCW Open Studio Event here!

In honor of National Clay Week’s “Community” theme, we’ve reached out to some friends to give us a lesson in each blog post on how to say some relevant words and phrases in several languages!

This week’s vocabulary is: National Clay Week, Community, and Studio

National Clay Week

Spanish: La semana nacional de cerámica

French: Semaine nationale de l'argile

Serbian: Државна Седмица Глине, državni shamitzav gline

Italian: Settimana nazionale dell'argilla

Japanese: 全国粘土ウイーク, zenkoku Nendo ui-ku

Hindi: चिकनी मिट्टी और बर्तन chikkani mitti aur barthan

Kannada: ಮಣ್ಣು ಮತ್ತು ಪಾತ್ರೆ mannu matthu paathre

Swedish: Nationella lerveckan

German: Nationelle Tonwoche

Polish: Narodowy Tydzień Gliny