Sunken Studio: The 'heart of clay' in Leeds' South Bank where adults unplug and discover the joy of creation
One of the largest ceramics studios in northern England began in a humble basement in Leeds.
Located in the heart of Leeds' South Bank, Sunken Studio offers adults a chance to disconnect from their phones and immerse themselves in the art of clay.
Founded nearly a decade ago by ceramicist Rebecca Catterall, it has evolved into the region's most prominent ceramics centre.
Feeling increasingly disengaged from her teaching job, Rebecca launched Sunken Studio in 2016, initially hosting classes from her makeshift home studio in her basement.
She told the Yorkshire Evening Post: "I wanted to try and make the ceramics element of my interest work for me. And so at the time, I just used what I had, which was my basement, and the kit that I acquired over the years from being an independent maker.
"I started running small, very small classes, both from the studio, but also around town, [and] started making connections with people."
As Rebecca built her network and gained experience as a business owner, she allowed Sunken Studio to flourish organically. After a move to a new venue at Leeds Dock in 2019, she eventually opened her current studio in the South Bank area in 2020.
The studio’s ethos is to cultivate a space that feels neither like home nor work, but rather a place of community around clay. At Sunken Studio, Rebecca and her team offer one-off classes, multi-week courses, and a membership program that allows subscribers to access the studio independently.
Rebecca said: "We're trying to lean into that there is this social element, but it's very much kind of calm and collected. We don't have food or drink on-site, so it's very much about material and spending quality time either with people who do know or don't know it doesn't matter."
Nearby, significant developments are taking shape, with Aire Park introducing new green spaces and residential units transforming what was once a neglected industrial area.
Rebecca said: "It's a really interesting area because there's a bit of a mindset that just stops at the city centre.
"I've really enjoyed finding out about the local area in this industrial bit that makes up South Bank and I and there's loads of interesting buildings around here.
"But there's also this for us. A space of this size somewhere else would probably not be accessible to us. And it's close enough that people can still walk down here."
Growing to become the largest ceramics centre in the region is a feat Rebecca attributes to her dedicated team and her organisational skills.
She said: "We've got good booking systems and a support team, [and] everything is done online which means that we can offer a better customer experience, rather than ringing a phone that nobody's picking up.
"All of our team members who are teaching are specialists. So you'll be taught throwing by our throwers, and hand building by our hand builders, so you can expect to have a focused amount of attention on you in your course by someone who has a lot of experience in that area."
She added: "We've got really good advocates in the studio. People really value it as a rarity to have and are really thankful that it exists.
"We always look at ways of making sure that we're supporting people who have busy lives."
For Rebecca, Sunken Studio also fulfils a personal need. Originally from Manchester and having relocated to Leeds from the US, she faced loneliness due to her extensive travelling.
She said: "I came with nothing, and all my friends were elsewhere. And my circumstances were such that for the first few years, my work was elsewhere, so I commuted between Bradford, Middlesbrough, and York.
"It made it really difficult as an adult to put down any kind of friendship groups because they were in all these other places."
"So coming out of that and building the business meant that all of a sudden I was connecting with other people in Leeds and making connections with other people who were doing similar things to me."
Nine years later, Sunken Studio, which started in a cellar in Roundhay, continues to embody its mission: "It's learning about material, but it's also spending time with yourself and with other people in order to be able to enhance."