Stoke-on-Trent ceramic skills project secures £131,514 to protect endangered pottery traditions

Stoke-on-Trent’s world-famous ceramic heritage is set to be preserved and passed on through a major new project backed by more than £131,000 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

The funding has been awarded to Stoke 100: Our Time, Our Place, Our Heritage, an intergenerational programme designed to celebrate and help safeguard the industrial hand-skills that helped shape Stoke-on-Trent into one of the most important ceramic centres in the world.

Led by Stoke Creates in partnership with British Ceramics Biennial, the project will bring together ten “Living Heritage Heroes” aged over 65 with twelve young people aged between 16 and 25.

Together, they will explore what it means to be part of a city recently recognised as a World Craft City, while documenting and sharing endangered pottery skills through workshops, archive research and practical learning.

The project comes at a significant time for the ceramics industry, both locally and nationally.

Across the UK, traditional hand-skills are increasingly under threat. Heritage Crafts, the national charity dedicated to protecting traditional craftsmanship, now maintains a Red List of Endangered Crafts, highlighting skills at risk of disappearing altogether.

Among those listed as critically endangered are industrial pottery and encaustic tile making, once major parts of Staffordshire’s industrial identity.

Encaustic tiles, famous for their decorative inlaid patterns, became synonymous with Victorian Britain and were produced in huge quantities by Stoke-on-Trent companies including Minton. They were exported across the world and installed in churches, public buildings, railway stations and the Palace of Westminster itself.

Industrial pottery has also been placed on the critically endangered list, reflecting growing concerns around an ageing workforce, limited training opportunities, rising costs, and the decline of traditional manufacturing processes that once defined life across the Potteries.

That wider context gives projects like this even greater significance.

For generations, Stoke-on-Trent’s ceramic industry relied on highly specialised craftspeople whose skills were learned by hand, often over decades. Mould-makers, transfer printers, casters, modellers and gilders formed the backbone of the industry, yet many of those traditional skills are now practised by fewer and fewer people.

The new programme aims to help address that by creating opportunities for knowledge to be shared directly between generations before those skills are lost.

Participants will document techniques including mould-making, tissue transfer, hand-casting and gilding through research visits, practical workshops and archive exploration.

The project will also result in a co-created Clay Manifesto examining the future of Stoke-on-Trent’s ceramic identity, alongside a touring exhibition and a newly commissioned documentary film.

Susan Clarke, Executive Director of Stoke Creates, said:

"The ceramics industry is facing significant challenges for many reasons.
This funding allows us to act at this critical moment. Stoke-on-Trent has
recently been designated a World Craft City, but designation alone is not
enough. We need to safeguard the skills that built this city and ensure
young people see themselves in that story.
Our Time, Our Place, Our Heritage is about celebrating the makers
behind the objects and creating new pathways for the future, and our
thanks go to The National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Lottery
players for making this project possible."

Creative direction for the project will be led by internationally recognised ceramic artist Neil Brownsword, whose work has long explored the decline and transformation of Stoke-on-Trent’s traditional ceramic industries.

Heritage research will be led by Martin Brown, drawing on extensive knowledge of the city’s archives and industrial history to support the documentation of endangered ceramic hand-skills.

Partners in Creative Learning CIC will oversee the schools engagement programme to ensure young people are actively involved in shaping the Clay Manifesto and contributing to the future conversation around Stoke-on-Trent’s ceramic identity.

The programme itself will be managed by arts and heritage consultant Sarah Bonam.

The project runs from April 2026 until February 2027.

Funding has been provided through The National Lottery Heritage Fund, which supports projects that help communities connect with, preserve and celebrate heritage across the UK.

For Stoke-on-Trent, this project is about more than nostalgia.

At a time when the city’s ceramic industry continues to face economic pressure, energy costs and changing manufacturing practices, it represents an attempt to protect the knowledge, craftsmanship and lived experience that helped build the Potteries.

Because while Stoke-on-Trent may now hold the title of World Craft City, the future of that identity depends on whether the skills behind it survive long enough to be passed on.