April ‘22: Town Hall Recap

To our Friends of the Pottery:

Thank you for joining us on Monday for our Town Hall, where we provided updates on the status of our relocation, our new studio features, upcoming programming, and opportunities to join our team. If you missed it, you can view the entire presentation here and we will highlight key information below.

Relocation

Construction is nearly complete at Foster/White. We are currently pending our final approvals, waiting for our Certificate of Occupancy. You can learn more about what will be available in our new studio here. We are tentatively hoping for a May Reopening.

Currently organizing and building out the space with volunteer support. Please sign up and help us here.

Programming

Spring Quarter

We have been ramping up in anticipation of launching classes with our reopening. This spring we will have a truncated session, tentatively running from Mon, May 2nd - June 27th for 8 weeks. Registration is set to start Wed, April 20th.

We want to emphasize that this is a tentative plan, and hinges around us getting our Certificate of Occupancy in time.

Summer Quarter

We then plan to offer a summer series, running from Mon, July 11 - Sun, Sept 4th for 8 weeks.

Finally, the Programs Department has been hard at work dreaming up new ways to expand our programming and update/improve our existing programming, including adding summer camps and free community clay nights.

We also have made a update to our work-study program, which we have restructured and launched as an apprenticeship. The program has shifted notably, and will be paired with an education curriculum that we will begin to grow and offer throughout the year. You can learn more about these changes here.

Opportunities

There are several major opportunities to get involved at Pottery Northwest this spring.

Seeking an Executive Director
Deadline: Friday, April 15th
The new ED will be responsible for the overall operations of Pottery Northwest, including overseeing short term and long-range strategic planning, leading budgeting and financial reporting, driving expansion and evolution of our programming, developing our team, building community partnerships, supporting development activities, and assisting with board governance.

Seeking an Education Manager
Deadline: Friday, April 8
The Education Manager will work collaboratively with other members of the Programs team to develop, coordinate, and deliver robust ceramics programing, including: adult and youth classes, camps, clay nights and other ceramic-centered events.

Seeking Instructors
Deadline: Ongoing
Ceramics instructors are professionals who will provide instruction to our adult programs, youth camps, and public events. Subjects are based on your expertise and could include wheel throwing, hand building, glazing, firing, methods around the world, figurative sculpture, and so forth.

Build-out Volunteers
Deadline: Ongoing
Help us shape up our new space! We need all hands on deck for organizing and building out our new space.

Join our Board of Directors
Opens April 18th
Pottery Northwest has several seats on the Board opening up and we invite YOU to join us! Board service is a volunteer leadership experience where you have the opportunity to provide your perspective and guidance to the organization. You don’t need prior experience, just enthusiasm, a commitment to learning, and time to give. Keep an eye on our newsletter for updates!

Equity

Pottery Northwest has been engaged in examining our structural and cultural features in the organization through an equity & inclusion lens over the last year. In our presentation, we noted a few activities & changes we’ve made:

• Conducted internal assessment including facilitating meetings with AIR & Staff, community/stake holder surveys, and document review 

• Explored and adopted a shared leadership practice within the organization; staff currently finishing their leadership manual

• Increased staff compensation across the board from 20-25 %+, with retropay, and expanded benefits

• Rebalanced staff workloads and created clear, new job descriptions for each staff member

• Expanded staff size, with budget for 7 FT staff by end of 2022.

• Redesigned our hiring processes to reduce bias and create a more equitable experience.

• Started an annual & quarterly reflection activity for staff and working on an anonymous feedback process for community, to ensure open lines of communication.

• Redeveloped our work-study program to be more comprehensive.

• Identified annual goals that focused on economic justice, looking at opportunities to create access for new communities.

• Adopted an open annual board recruitment process, launching April 15, with a focus on skill set recruitment.

Over the upcoming months, we also will be:

• Re-writing our studio / community guidelines in a collaborative fashion with our AIR & incoming Apprentices

• Assess our AIR program recruitment practices and redevelop program to provide better support to artists.

• All-Hands meetings for community leadership to ensure that folks have more communication & Transparency

• Working with Epiphanies of Equity to provide further assessment, training, and support.