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The Clay Town proposal is led by the St Austell Bay Economic Forum and prepared by the Clay Town Project group in association with partners in Stoke. Partners include St Austell Market House St Austell Chamber of Commerce Wheal Martyn IMERYS St Austell Brewery Emma Bridgewater St Austell College Clay Foundation - Stoke St Austell Business Improvement Local Artists: Paul Jackson and District Jenny Bevan Eden Project Heligan Gardens British Ceremics Biennial Professor James Hitchmough, Dept. of Landscape, University of Cornwall Ceramics & Glass Group Sheffield FOREWARD from James Staughton Chair of St Austell Bay Economic Forum It is with immense pride that I introduce this cultural prospectus which outlines the exciting and diverse opportunities presented by the regeneration of St Austell. Over two years ago the St Austell Bay Economic Forum, made up from business leaders, community groups and local politicians, came together with a joint ambition to help regenerate the St Austell area. We are hugely supportive of the vision outlined for Clay Town and I am delighted that this sense of partnership, involvement and opportunity remains so strong today. The purposed activities if realised would transform our fortunes and give us a confidence that has been in too shorter supply to date. We are well known for our clay and we deserve to be nationally, if not internationally, renowned for it to. I urge you to join me and the Partners in helping to make it happen and to celebrate our rich heritage in clay. Clay Town THE PAST Famous for having its own strong identity, and many communities with a low economic base and St Austell is celebrated as the home of china clay. declining prospects. Pottery hero Josiah Wedgwood went to St Austell around 1760 on the trail of a rumour about white The first attempt at the regeneration of St Austell was kaolin that was suitable for making porcelain. made using retail in the early 1980s. By the year 2000 What he found was china clay: this was to be the local stakeholders, the Council and developers had principle ingredient in his pioneering ceramics tried again, but missed another opportunity to capture work known as creamware. the soul of what made St Austell special. This new product, fine and light and perfect for the application of detailed, printed colour designs, was so successful that it soon challenged even China’s market-dominating porcelain. In St Austell Wedgwood had found the precious mineral, which he proceeded to order in increasing volumes, and his competitors soon followed suit- thus the china clay industry got under way. By the early 19th century the clay industry was big business. The St Austell deposits had emerged as the largest in the world, and many other uses had been found for the clay, such as in paper, paint and rubber goods. By the mid-19th century 65,000 tonnes of china clay were being mined in the St Austell area every year by seven thousand workers. By 1910, Cornwall was producing 50% cent of the world’s china clay, something in the region of a million tonnes every year, 75% percent of which was exported. St Austell was the world center of china clay extraction. The legacy of China Clay still defines the area to this day. By the 1980s, the clay mining industry had a huge legacy of post-industrial land to address and the industry itself was facing major challenges of global competition, ageing infrastructure and rising costs that was bound to lead to decline. St Austell was a prime example of what development economists call ‘the resource curse’ - a town that had seen vast amounts of wealth pass through and had almost nothing left to show for it except the shells of once grand buildings 4 THE PRESENT St Austell, the largest town in Cornwall and its hinterland, including what are now called the clay villages, are to this day the headquarters of the clay industry. The area has three secondary schools with over 1,000 pupils. The local Primary Schools teach more than 1,500 children and thousands of students study with St Austell College. We have talked to teachers and parents who think that good fortune happens to others and aspiration is low in the area. Furthermore, the area experiences significant deprivation problems - poor quality housing and limited access to affordable housing, poor access to community infrastructure and services, low income levels, low education, skills and training attainment levels, poor health and general well-being issues. Yet to stand outside the beautiful Grade 1 listed Holy Trinity Church you will see the most unusual flowering trees (Eucryphia cordifolia). There is the magnificent Market House in which Churchill made his famous speech championing Free Trade and the shops fronts that with love and attention would compare with any high quality market town. Most places seeking to regenerate don’t have a story that can claim to be world class but St Austell does. We believe we need to create a distinctive image that will bring success to this cultural environment; hope and aspiration to the social environment and footfall for the commercial economy. We need to ambitiously develop a cultural vision built on the foundation of St Austell – clay. 5 THE FUTURE In 2014 a group got together and agreed to have one last try to wake this sleeping giant and create a vision for the town that builds on its heritage and looks to its future as a Clay Town. If using our best efforts we were met with apathy and negativity we would walk away. If we were welcomed, like a snowball we would make the team bigger and bigger welcoming anybody who wanted to join us. In short the document that follows is a call to arms. It is a moment at which every adult who feels anything for St Austell says, ‘If it’s not us, who? If not now, when?’ This famous phrase was not coined for St Austell, but in a town that notably has not for many years had love poured into it, it is for the current generation to respond to these questions and create a new legacy. The first logical step was to bring together all of those who had both an interest in St Austell and a passion to do something to improve the area, along with the arts community which works both in clay and ceramics, giving them ability to use both the material and the place. So we began with St Austell Brewery the oldest business in St Austell and the most successful. Their CEO James Staughton is passionate about the town that gave the brewery its name. Then John Kneller who, along with his fellow Market House CIC Directors, imagined the possibility that regenerating the most important building in St Austell would shape the confidence of the whole town. We talked to the educational sector to explore how the Clay Town vision could be woven into the road map of their future. We have talked to councillors and representative of the Economic Forum. Then we spoke to the most important people of all: the artists who would inform, inspire and lead the cultural and educational aspiration to use St Austell as their stage. Paul Jackson Jenny Bevan 6 Their task is to create a cultural argument for visiting and using St Austell, not just based on retail shops. Our ambition is to see if we can turn the centre of St Austell into a giant ceramics and cultural exhibition site where whole streets are festooned with tiles, the Market House would house artisan studios, Wheal Martyn will become an education hub where people can learn ceramic art skills. We are also aware that between Wheal Martyn and the Market House lies an outdoor facility that, had one tried to build it from scratch, would have costs hundreds of millions of pounds. The Clay Trails and the woodlands, reservoirs and lakes potentially could provide the links from St Austell to its clay villages and communities. We believe that some further investment in where there are known gaps in the trails and the creation of better leisure facilities around the trails is a necessary part of the reimagining of St Austell. We have a vision for the animation of the streets in St Austell. We have a vision from Wheal Martyn to the Market House as the ultimate Clay Trail. We have a vision to draw together the great gardens (Pine Lodge, Caerheys, Heligan and of course…the Eden Project) to create an urban parkscape that offers in its own right a conversational piece. The reason we want to do this is to create a place so magical, so transformed that everybody will want to come and see what has been done. Its beauty, its warmth, humour, playfulness and belief in the power of storytelling to transform lives we believe could make St Austell more popular than the Eden Project. WHAT HAVE WE DONE SO FAR Knowing that the great china clay industry had powered the ceramic industry in the Potteries we went north to introduce ourselves to our distant cousins. In Stoke, we found, a community struggling with almost identical issues to our own. A friendship was struck and the CEO, Head of Education, Head of Tourism of Stoke City Council paid a return visit for two days accompanied by a great friend, Emma Bridgewater owner and inspiration behind Emma Bridgewater Pottery, one of the most popular ceramicists and creative entrepreneurs in the country. After several visits we have agreed to share a biennial festival show-casing the best ceramicists.

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