Workshops & Programming

We work through cultural collaboration programs to involve local public schools, senior citizens, veterans, and the local community of indigenous people. Working with ceramics arts as therapy and cultural capital we strive to lay the foundation to promote and increase the economic strength of Alcona County.

High School Workshops
2023 launched our school-based ceramic arts education pilot project developed and presented by HARC. It introduced students to the social history and purpose of ceramic arts through hands-on experiences. We continue to grow this education
program, using clay as a teaching tool to achieve multidimensional results.

This two-week pilot project intellectually and emotionally engaged our students. They received classes that taught the making of clay objects — lidded boxes, whistles, art tiles — followed by an inspiring field trip to the Flint Institute of Arts Contemporary Craft Wing. Our students gained a sense of their personal creative ability, a recognition that their own unusual or untrained ideas are relevant and perhaps could be relatives of the art objects displayed in the Museum setting.

In 2024 we look to expand our ceramic arts education to include an introduction to the potential economic viability of making and selling pottery, to encourage students to connect with a visceral, intangible understanding of a ‘sense of place’, and to inquire into the potential cross general and cross-cultural idea of sharing with our culture bearers – veterans, seniors, and indigenous Anishinaabe people.

In the classroom, we will:

Expand on hand-building and pottery wheel techniques
Begin to research the income-producing potential of production pottery
Design an art tile mural for Alcona High School, as a student legacy statement
Learn tile making from Detroit’s Pewabic Pottery, on-site at school
Understand the necessity for teamwork & accountability to accomplish goals.

Veteran Workshops
HARC is teaming up with the Alcona County Veterans Aﬀairs Committee and our Board of Commissioners in a countywide eﬀort to engage with veterans. HARC’s intention with this project is to provide veterans the opportunity to discover the power of art as therapy. We want to acknowledge the importance of what veterans have done for all of us. Our intended promotions are meant to create veteran interest in ceramic arts classes and events, to be oﬀered free of charge to those who have already paid with their lives for the freedoms we all have. We want to oﬀer the fun, satisfying, and life-aﬃrming potential of the creative process to our military community.

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