Pottery Workshop
August 27-28, 2002

Although Barbara was our potter in residence, we decided to conduct one more workshop after she left. It was taught by Ellie Schimelman and Sammy Ansi.

The invitation read:
We are happy to invite you to another two day non-residential workshop on pottery being organized by Cross Cultural Collaborative, Inc. together with specialists from USA and Ghana. This particular workshop will offer participants, especially school children on vacation, the chance to express themselves as individuals and as groups. Participants will acquire artistic as well as educative skills in the use of clay. Examples of these items are: whistles, containers, pots, murals, clay beads and vases.

We had 18 participants. There were about 6 teachers and Sammy worked with them separately while Ellie worked with the rest of the group which were mostly secondary school students.

The interest can be summed up by what happened the second day. Class was supposed to start at 9 a.m. When Ellie and Sammy came at 8 a.m. for their morning coffee they were told that the students had been waiting for them since 6:30 a.m. This in Ghana, where it's not unusual for people to drift into a class half way through the session.

In conversations with the students I was told that they were so happy to have access to as much clay as they wanted and an interesting place to work. They also appreciated having professional potters there who could help with their projects.

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