The rivers and us: Free Clay Sculpting Workshop

Prebooked tickets only. Free event. Suitable for 7+ years (accompanied by an adult, please book a space if you wish to participate as an adult), teens and adults.

Join sculptor and ceramicist Sarah Schiewe for a creative, family-friendly clay workshop inspired by York's rivers, flooding history, and climate resilience. In this hands-on workshop, participants will create their own unique air-dry clay fish — a "river messenger" carrying stories, memories, and imagined journeys from the Yorkshire Dales down to the River Ouse.

Alongside making, we'll explore some of the extraordinary things that have been discovered in rivers over many years — from everyday objects lost and carried along the water to unexpected and intriguing finds that hint at human lives, industries, and floods long past.

Using simple clay hand-building techniques, families will shape and texture their fish with materials found along the river such as reeds, driftwood, pebbles, sand, silt, and plant matter, alongside bark, leaves, rope, and fabric. These natural impressions will create tactile surfaces inspired by water, land, and flood environments, turning each fish into a storyteller of the river's shifting history and imagination.

Participants will add "flood memory lines" and words such as rise, flow, safe, and home to their sculptures, creating personal artworks that reflect both lived experience and imagination. At the end of the workshop, all the fish will come together as a collective "shoal of messages" — a temporary installation celebrating community voices, resilience, and our shared connection to the river.

Paints will be provided so participants can finish decorating their sculptures at home once dry.