Social Experiments: Knowledge Is Power: 6 Towns, Spode Factory, Stoke-on-Trent, 23 September - 5 November 2017.

Social Experiments brings together 2 projects, Material Environments: Bad Shit and Knowledge is Power: 6 Towns. Rooted in place and history, both projects research the capacity for material and socio political transformation through live scientific experimentation, production and participation to suggest new ways of thinking.

This item contains a project outline and BCB Festival Invitation (courtesy of the British Ceramics Biennial 2017), 13 Exhibition Views, 2 images of the Clay Book Making Workshops, 2 developmental drawings, audio of the firing sound, and a Ceramic Values Congress Programme, courtesy of Ulster University and the Ceramics and its Dimensions Congress.

This item documents Knowledge Is Power: 6 Towns an interactive installation commissioned for the British Ceramics Biennial in 2017, in collaboration with Stoke On Trent Libraries and Archives. Inspired by the history books in Stoke-on-Trent’s special 6 Towns Collection Harrison worked with local schools, businesses and community groups to create a complete set of clay replica books. Housed in 6 large adapted shelving units, the replicas were fired daily in accordance with the library’s lending figures. The project celebrates the changing role of Stoke-on-Trent’s libraries as cultural agents, repositories of local knowledge and sources of inspiration, invention and pleasure.

To coincide with the 5th BCB Harrison delivered a keynote speech at the Ceramics And Its Dimensions Congress held to extend the debate on the value and role of ceramics in society.

Photography by Darren Washington. Images used with permission courtesy of the Photographer and the British Ceramics Biennial.

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