Scouts: Pottery painting and clay
Barefoot Ceramics is run by Paul and Fiona Jefferies. They've both had long involvements with Scouting being leaders and assistants at various packs/troops. Between them they clock up about 30 years of direct involvement in Scouting.
We're happy to discus program ideas to help you bring an extra element of fun and creativity into your program - whether that's for a regular weekly meeting or as part of a special event like a family camp, sixer camp or rough camp (hand coiled pots on a backwoods fire anyone?).
Through Barefoot Ceramics Paul has taught hundreds of people, from ages 2 up to about 72, to "throw" pots on the potters wheel whilst together Barefoot have shown many thousands of all ages and backgrounds how to Have Fun™ pottery painting.
Did you know Barefoot are winners of two V-Awards including 2008's Family Day Out award?
Program ideas for clay and ceramics
If you'd like to do some ceramics ... hand building in clay or throwing on the potters wheel; or if you fancy pottery painting we're more than happy to work up a Scout program based on the Craft activity badge (Clay fits well here) or Area 2 of the Creative Challenge (note the Artist badge is about drawing and is probably not the best fit).
- You can come to the studio on Charles Street or we can come out to you all activities are portable.
- Note that clay can be pretty messy whilst the pottery paints are completely washable.
- Also we only have a single portable pottery wheel and the most per hour that can use it is about 5. If you come into the studio we have 2 wheels.
- The most painting simultaneously we've had is about 40 (at a corporate team-building event in a hotel) but we can pretty much run pottery painting for any number (max in the studio 24 people) - you'll want about 1 hour for Cub ages and above to paint. Beavers will finish a small piece of pottery painting in anything from 15 minutes to 3 hours ... lol.
- Check out our gallery and website for more info.
Explorer Scouts
If there are a few Explorers doing the Creative Arts activity badge then we could maybe arrange to cover some of their 25 hours, perhaps learning to make ceramics as part of a course of activities including hand-building ceramic items that could be completed away from our studio.Cubs pottery and ceramics
For Cubs the Artist activity badge is the most relevant, possibly Section 4 of the Creative Challenge. There are 3 activities required - to fit all 3 in cubs could design a piece of pottery, e.g. a mug or an 8" plate (which nearly fits on A4, see plate planning template) before the event. Then they could transfer the design on to the pottery for their second activity. Finishing the badge of by crafting a trinket from clay (e.g. a small animal or a pendant) or possibly by throwing a pot if you've a small group or if you have plenty of time (e.g. are on camp).Beaver Scouts
Similarly Beavers could make a clay model (could be a wheel thrown pot?) for the Creativity part of The Creative Challenge or do the best part of the Creative activity badge (though this seems to fit best as an individual activity that the Beaver tells the group about afterwards).Best in Scouting,
Have Fun!
firing your imagination ™