About the Project
For generations, clay extraction in Devon and ceramics manufacture in Staffordshire were central to each economy, providing a major source of employment for generations, a significant factor in the formation of cultural identity, and a major contributor to deprivation in the wake of post-industrial decline. Our research will support the reclamation of more inclusive and less triumphal narratives pertaining to the experience and testimony of generations of workers & communities that have been integral to and deeply impacted by these industrial 'boom-& bust' cycles.
Research Team
Becky Nunes
Lead researcher, University of Staffordshire
University of Staffordshire
Becky Nunes is a lens-based artist, researcher, and educator. Nunes works primarily with lens-based media in a post-documentary framework to re-centre marginalised voices and to challenge extractivist narratives of representation and land use. Her works are held in national and international private collections and museums. Nunes is a current doctoral candidate; her research maps planetary relations through a lens of post-human feminism.
Sophy Rickett
Co-Lead researcher, University of the Arts London
University of the Arts London
Sophy Rickett is an artist working with photography, film, text and archives. Known primarily as a photographic artist and exhibiting internationally since the late 1990s, Rickett's work has developed from a conceptual examination of the condition of photography itself into a multi-layered consideration of the ways in which meaning is generated, encompassing complex exhibition presentations of photographs, texts and objects, as well as artist books.
Our Approach
We combine research-based creative practice with detailed primary research, data gathering and field work, in seeking to understand and uncover new knowledge about the histories and cultural legacies of the UK's historic ball clay industry and production, situated in South Devon and Stoke-on-Trent. Through innovative interdisciplinary research methods, the project outcomes will diversify the currently very limited range of narratives found in historical accounts of these processes, both at a local level and in the public domain.