Latest news with #TheGreatPotteryThrowDown
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Artists Open Houses 2025: Visit Adam Johnson and Dan Mackey in their Brighton home studio (EXCLUSIVE)
Artists across Brighton will be opening up their homes and studios and turning them into retail galleries this May for the biannual Artists Open House event, and husbands are excited to be welcoming the public into their home on 11 Rugby Road again. They have been making and selling ceramics together for many years now. 'I've been taking part for 11 years, ever since I started dating Adam, who has Open Housed since 2009. I was living in London at the time and travelling down to Brighton to be creative and it felt like where I wanted to be permanently,' Mackey tells Attitude. 'Adam was my first boyfriend who enjoyed art and design too and we are still enjoy working together on this strange and amazing festival where you invite art lovers into your home.' You may recognise Adam Johnson from his cracking run on the fourth series of Channel 4's The Great Pottery Throw Down or the BBC's , in which Johnson married Mackey. Or you might have spotted him on the as a trailblazer in the arts. In 2021, Johnson capitalised on his newfound fame and launched Adam Ceramic, offering his and Mackey's clay creations to his fanbase. 'We consciously made it so that we spend our days together working across all aspects of being self-employed artists, and our skill sets work in synchronicity,' Johnson says. 'Most potters have quite a solitary time in a studio, so I'm glad I get to share it all with Dan and Egg, our pug.' It's no secret that retail is hard, and it is difficult to make those personal connections that drive sales through a website. But Brighton's Artists Open House event has been a financial lifeline for Johnson and Mackey. 'There's nothing like an in-person sale when I can chat to someone, and they get to touch my piece before taking it home. It's a joyful way for me and Dan to exhibit and meet customers that can see where everything is made,' Johnson explains. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Dan Mackey (@danmakeystuff) Mackey reveals what they have planned for this year's Open House, 'We've taken lots of inspiration from woodland and beach walks with our dog Egg. So, our garden is open and filled with 'pick your own' ceramic mushrooms and garden sculptures blending in with the spring plants that have popped up. Inside we always love displays that are just as fun as the artwork – packing the place with personality. No stuffy gallery vibes here.' From their home studio in Brighton, the couple make full use of social media to promote their wares. 'It can sometimes feel like a minefield, spending hours trying to make a good reel to showcase my work, and then the algorithm decides to hide it – or send it far and wide if you're lucky – and I have been incredibly lucky with some of my videos,' says Johnson, before admitting that it is a balancing act. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Adam Johnson (@adamceramic) 'Pottery is a quite traditional field too, so I dance across a line of being a proud gay and a potter, making a conscious decision to be completely me because our work is from our hands and our hearts. This approach has helped me create a really encouraging, friendly social community.' You can visit their Artists Open House at 11 Rugby Road, Brighton, BN1 6EB For more information visit Brighton's The post Artists Open Houses 2025: Visit Adam Johnson and Dan Mackey in their Brighton home studio (EXCLUSIVE) appeared first on Attitude.
New Statesman
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Ah, baking, the only hobby I've really stuck to
Illustration by Charlotte Trounce There's a running joke among my friends that if there was a crafting version of an EGOT – The Great British Bake Off, The Great British Sewing Bee, The Great Pottery Throw Down – I would be first to raise the bunting-adorned trophy. This is categorically nonsense. I could probably have a good run at the Sewing Bee, but the speed it demands would soon undo me. And my adventures in pottery throwing were fairly short lived once I discovered that a) it is a prohibitively expensive hobby, and b) I was considerably less naturally gifted than I'd hoped – or perhaps expected. The Bake Off, however… As a teenager I often forced my mother to spend her Saturday mornings driving me to my favourite specialist baking shop on the A3, and repaid her efforts by covering her kitchen in icing sugar and failing to adequately clean up. But really she asked for it, because she set me off on this sticky path. It was my mother who let me, as an unsteady toddler, transfer eggs from their cardboard nests to the plastic tray in the fridge; who taught me to use a skewer to test if a cake is cooked; how dough should spring back once proved; that 'stiff-peak egg whites' means you should be able to hold the bowl over your head without them falling on it (a high-stakes test). She gave me confidence, and I took it, tended to it, fed it, and it rose into something more. From the flapjacks in my Hamlyn's children's cookbook I graduated to friands and eclairs, croissants and plaited loaves. I learned to mould flowers and leaves from fondant icing; to pipe delicate butterflies out of royal; to shape round buns, sealed beneath, from unwieldily wet doughs. I made increasingly and unnecessarily elaborate cakes for my friends' birthdays, even my own birthdays, and eventually graduated to making wedding cakes: stacking tier upon tier, reinforced with plastic dowels and cakeboards, decorated with spun sugar, edible flowers, candied nuts, oven-dried thins of peach and pear. By the early days of lockdown I baked near daily – to pass the time, to self-soothe. In those first, solitary weeks, I heated sugar to just the right shade of copper for salted-caramel brownies, strained fruit for curds with which to sandwich macarons, brushed honey over delicately thin sheets of filo for baklava. I relished running out of a key ingredient: I guess I have to go to the supermarket now, that most precious of outings. Each week I'd parcel up packages of baked goods to drop on the doorsteps of friends who lived nearby – less out of genuine generosity, more out of the true impossibility of eating it all myself. In my early twenties, in those wilderness months after university and before getting my first staff job at a newspaper, I had filled the days and hours between freelance shifts and unpaid internships running a baking blog, which gave me not just something to do, but a place to write. But slowly, as work became more demanding, as I found creative outlets in other crafts, as I encountered terrible oven after terrible oven in my long series of rental flats, I stopped baking. I retired the blog, and my considerable stash of tins and turntables and palette knives was consigned to boxes in my grandmother's garage. I was, on occasion, persuaded to make a birthday cake, but the desire to bake anything more challenging rarely took me. Until Good Friday, when, after a night of little sleep, I rose at 4.30am with certainty: today was a day for hot cross buns. I worked until a more sociable hour arrived, and then walked to Sainsbury's to gather what I needed: caster sugar, mixed peel, eggs and fresh oranges, to add to the strong white bread flour, yeast, butter, milk and sultanas I had at home. I was craving once again the rhythm of proving and knocking back; the steps laid out simply before me, demanding little more than time and attention. Into the oven went flour and yeast and hope, and out came hot cross buns, golden and glorious – and a little of my old self, too. [See also: Joan Didion without her style] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
BBC News
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Deaf model from Cheltenham appears in British Vogue
A young woman with a hearing impairment has featured in British Vogue, modelling designer hearing aid Harris, 22, from Cheltenham, was featured in the February edition of the world-famous fashion magazine, published on January 15, after working with designer Destiny Pinto, who creates fashionable medical Pinto recently won the Vogue and BMW Future Creators competition and Ms Harris was chosen to model her designs."I had massive imposter syndrome, but it was incredible," said Miss Harris, who has also appeared on this year's series of Channel 4's Great Pottery Throw Down. "So many people will look at that magazine and be able to relate." Miss Harris was born deaf and had two hearing aids but she said she mostly relied on lip explained that growing up she did not see anyone like her on television or social media until her late face masks were introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic, it meant she found it very difficult to understand did not want to get a cochlear implant because she was "embarrassed to have something so visual" and "didn't want to embrace it".However, since having her operation in December 2023, she has felt "amazing".She said it made her feel "stronger and happier"."In the last two years I have accepted who I am because I can either be unhappy for 80 years of my life, or accept it and make some change," she hearing aids, a cochlear implant does not amplify sounds, it sends sound signals directly to the auditory nerve, bypassing damaged parts of the inner has external parts including a microphone and speech processor, but it also has an internal receiver which is implanted under the skin behind the ear into the cochlea. 'Barriers can be overcome' When she was recovering from her operation, she decided to apply for season eight of The Great Pottery Throw Down, which aired on 5 January, and made it through the audition process."On the first day I was there, they connected my implant, by bluetooth, to the microphone the judges were wearing."This meant that even if she sat on a far away table she could still hear said this was a huge positive because "these barriers can be overcome, and people who don't have disabilities get the opportunity to learn about someone who is different".She added that her mother had supported her the whole way through each journey and that she "wouldn't be here" without her.
The Guardian
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
TV tonight: Stacey Solomon and Joe Swash invite you to Pickle Cottage
8pm, BBC One Pickle Cottage opens its doors for the newest celebrity fly-on-the-wall series. Golden couple Stacey Solomon and Joe Swash let the cameras in to their home for six months, as they raise their five children, two dogs and four ducks. The duo are easy to like – especially when the besotted Joe recalls the day they met ('I haven't been able to shake him since,' says Stacey) – in what can be described only as soft TV. It starts with them celebrating their wedding anniversary. Hollie Richardson 8pm, Channel 4 A second series for The Great Pottery Throw Down's Keith Brymer Jones and his actor partner, Marj Hogarth, as they transform a 163-year-old Pwllheli chapel into their dream home. They want to convert the Sunday school, but they need to deal with the rot problem first. HR 9pm, Sky History In the final episode of Bradley Walsh's ancient Egypt investigation, he meets Tutankhamun's dad, the 'alien pharaoh' Akhenaten (whose apparently elongated skull has given rise to out-there theories over the years), before discovering how huge rocks were ferried down the Nile for the construction of the pyramids. Ali Catterall 9pm, BBC Three The pro footballer turned hench influencer channels his inner Ross Kemp for this six-parter, embedding himself in various global hotspots to see how crime culture negatively affects the lives of young men. He begins in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where drug gangs operate with impunity while callow foot soldiers risk their lives for a pittance. Graeme Virtue 9pm, U&Gold Morrissey and Clunes continue their relaxed and amiable journey – some of it is simply them chatting over beers and food – by driving from Biarritz in south-western France (fish, sunshine) to the Pyrenees (cable cars, slipping over on ice). Morrissey's time as the voice of Bob the Builder provides some good anecdotes. Jack Seale 10pm, Channel 4 Bridget Christie's wonderfully strange menopause comedy continues. 'Linda's ledger' – a chore tracker that counts all the time women waste – is the hot topic still inspiring a revolution among local women. Could Linda's mardy sister Siobhain (Liza Tarbuck), who has come to stay, be persuaded to join them? HR Premier League football: Nottingham Forest v Manchester United 7pm, TNT Sports 1. From the City Ground.
BBC News
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Star panel revealed for BBC Radio Stoke Make A Difference Awards
An all-star panel of judges has been announced for this year's BBC Radio Stoke Make A Difference across all eight categories close at 17:00 BST on year's judges include an Olympic gold medallist and a former Blue Peter presenter as well as a host of actors and TV stars. Among them The Great Pottery Throw Down presenter Keith Brymer Jones and They Think It's All Over's Nick award ceremony will take place later this year at the Bet365 Stadium in Stoke-on-Trent. The full list of categories this year is:The Volunteer Award, judged by The Great Pottery Throw Down presenter Keith Brymer Jones, is awarded to an individual who makes a notable difference to their community by giving their time voluntarily to help Young Hero Award, judged by track and field athlete and sports presenter Jazmin Sawyers, will be awarded to someone under 16 who has made a positive impact in their community or achieved something Great Neighbour Award, judged by actor and TV presenter Nick Hancock, is awarded to an individual who helps to make the neighbourhood a better place to live or work in, either on a regular basis or through a single act of Active Award, judged by trampoline gold medal-winning Olympian Bryony Page, awarded to an individual or group of people who have used physical activity or sport as a way of improving the lives of those in their Animal Award, judged by former Blue Peter presenter Anthea Turner, is awarded to either a remarkable animal that improves people's lives or an individual or group of people who improve the welfare of Green Award, judged by explorer, author, and documentary maker Levison Wood, which is awarded to an individual or group of people who improve or conserve their local Fundraiser Award, judged by playwright and actor Deb McAndrew, is awarded to an individual or group of people who have gone the extra mile to raise funds for a good Community Group Award, judged by former SAS soldier Melvyn Downes, awarded to a group of people who have helped to change the lives of others within their community. A spokesperson for the station said: "We're so lucky in Staffordshire and Cheshire that they go above and beyond in their communities."Every year, we're inspired by their stories, and it's wonderful to be able to recognise just a few of them at this special occasion." To nominate a winner, visit the BBC's Make A Difference pages online. Shortlisted finalists will be notified from June 2025. Follow BBC Stoke & Staffordshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
