Clayground Collective is a UK independent arts organisation established to realise Project Clay – a venture to create a new public space in London in 2014. This new space aims to give anyone standing there a poetic sense of the world through the world’s clays in all their variety. Inspired by the hundreds of athletes arriving in London for the Olympic Games in 2012, Project Clay is inviting people in over 200 countries to literally dig clay and relay this material to London – a city built on clay. Together with material dug in London, these clays will be worked on with artists, young people and adults from different walks of life to create the new space. Project Clay is led by ceramicist Duncan Hooson and producer Julia Rowntree, directors of Clayground Collective.  Clayground Collective’s legal status is a company limited by guarantee.  The third director of Clayground Collective Limited is Claire Hyde.

Duncan Hooson

is a ceramic artist and educator with extensive experience of working with students of a range of ages and abilities in formal and informal education. His ceramic and art commissions include permanent installations outside the award-winning Alsop/Stormer Library in Peckham, South London, at BBC Leicester and at Hove Museum. He has designed and made large scale temporary work for Sadler’s Wells and South Bank Centre, London.

Julia Rowntree

is a project coordinator and fundraiser with 20 years’ experience of working in local and international contexts primarily for the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT). Her book, Changing the Performance: A Companion Guide to Arts, Business and Civic Engagement was published by Routledge in 2006 in association with the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA).

Project Clay advisors include: Javier Cuadros, Clay Mineralogy Researcher, Natural History Museum, London; Shirley Brice Heath, Professor at Large, Brown University, USA; Roy Stephenson and Mike Webber, archaeologists and Ali Zaidi, motiroti.