Ciara Neufeldt
Community is close to ceramic artist, craftsperson, and facilitator Ciara’s heart. Her practice uses clay to bring people together with the “therapeutic aspects of tactile making”, Ciara shares. She first came to ceramics during university, where access to the department allowed her to fall in love with the practice. And so, Ciara is deeply cognisant of the importance of supporting those who struggle to access a ceramics studio due to various social factors. Opportunity and participation is where her focus lies, and Ciara used this residency to explore new ways of engaging with these areas. Her decorative tile projects, Make a Wish, and her work with the Spring Families Festival, were collaborations with Fine Cell Work – a charity which empowers those in prison to craft.
Ciara was drawn to the V&A’s quilt collection, specifically the HMP Wandsworth Quilt, commissioned in 2010 by Fine Cell Work. “I’m interested in the global histories of quilting and how they relate to community and collective making,” she shares. As a self-described “magpie”, Ciara’s residency and research allowed her to pull from many different materials and sources, such as the collection of jelly moulds, the Gilbert Collection, and the mosaic floor in the Cast Courts. Ciara is also collaborating with the V&A’s families team to further explore communal-making inspired by these collections.
To be surrounded by so much history and such a breadth of material had a huge impact on the creative journeys of Michael, Jess, and Ciara in their Adobe creative residency at the V&A. The values of accessibility, inclusivity and community were the foundations of their time spent together. Without this residency, their practices and personalities would not have impacted one another like they did, through sharing sessions, informal conversations and creative reflections. “We learnt a lot about pigeons from Ciara,” says Jess, “and now my Instagram feed is full of pigeons!”