Above: Clayhill Arts, Dialogues performance, June 2018, Mark Devereux Projects

ARTSTHREAD speak with Deborah Parkes, co-founder of Clayhill Arts, about the importance of Lifelong Learning.

Clayhill Arts was founded by Deborah and Michael Parkes and is a residential art school in Somerset, SouthWest England, committed to life-long learning for those in the arts sector. Working with leading artists and creative professionals, Clayhill Arts runs a programme of courses and masterclasses designed to support participants as they grow their practice. Find out more information from the Clayhill Arts website.



ARTSTHREAD: Please tell us a little about how you came to create Clayhill Arts?

Deborah Parkes: After spending our early careers working across the arts, hospitality and education, we became frustrated with the lack of quality training facilities and professional development support for artists and those working the creative industries. This took us on a month long journey around the county of Somerset in search of a building to make a place like that happen and it was here that we found Clayhill Farm.
The farm buildings needed extensive renovations and over an 18 month period we developed the site into the residential learning environment that it is today. We now run a range of courses, events and residencies for artists and creative professionals to help develop their practice and creative careers.

ARTSTHREAD: Why is lifelong learning so important? And especially with relevance to the visual arts?

Deborah Parkes: Although “every day is a school day” we tend to stop formally learning at school. We spend most of our life learning - through the actions of others, at work or online - yet there lacks anywhere that allows you to continue to learn outside of formal educational institutions.

Increasingly creative subjects are in decline. They have been dropped from curriculums in schools and universities in favour of more traditional subjects. The world is ever changing though, and we need a flexible creative workforce!

As a visual artist it can be isolating and lonely and sometimes you doubt what you’re doing. It’s important to create a strong network of people that you admire and are inspired by around you. They can help you through those difficult times and calm your woes. Making physical time to gather with this network can be equally important as well as strengthening your ongoing access to opportunities.

ARTSTHREAD: So, how do you find this new network . . .? 

Deborah Parkes: Time spent learning alongside others can help forge those relationships. You are going through a process of development together and have someone there who you can be accountable to. It’s not easy to gain these skills outside of a formal education setting and that’s what we’re doing with our course programme at Clayhill: by offering residential courses that give an immersive experience and a chance to take time out and consider your practice - the learning and creative journey you are taking.

Everybody learns differently and responds to different learning environments. This is unfortunately difficult to accommodate in the education sector. We wanted to build a different learning space, one that encourages interaction and allows you to step outside of your normal environment to learn in whatever space you prefer. A learning environment that combines good food, rest and relaxation in a rural setting to inspire creativity.
At Clayhill, we believe that learning is empowering and that you should be able to access it throughout your life and career. We want to bring learners and those that inspire us together to work alongside each other and develop our knowledge and skills.



ARTSTHREAD: How can lifelong learning broaden one’s current career path?

Deborah Parkes: We rarely have the time to develop ourselves and gain the necessary skills to achieve our potential. Working in isolation, previous educational experience or the comments of others often become boundaries which are hard to escape. We want to offer freedom to escape these and allow you to gain perspective on your creativity by exploring individual potential by safely encouraging you to explore and challenge your creative boundaries.

ARTSTHREAD: What if I fancy a total career change? How should one go about this?

Deborah Parkes: Taking time out to consider your options is really important but this can be difficult, especially financially. It’s about rethinking what education can do for you, how valuable it is and looking at this as an investment.

Doing this in an environment that nurtures and supports those challenging and creative questions, allows you to get away to process and evaluate your next steps - it’s important to find the right environment for that.
There is a wealth of online resources to help you map out a new career, but we really value the opportunity of the physical and would urge you to seek out an in-life course with other people who are going through the same thing, to examine where you are now and where you want to go next. Mentoring might be helpful for this too.

ARTSTHREAD: What tips do you have on self-motivation?

Deborah Parkes: The creative industry can feel disparate, isolating and lonely. It’s hard to produce your best work when you feel like this. We believe that a network of individuals working together, learning from each other and helping each other is essential to help the creative sector.

Joining (or creating) online groups to support you can be helpful. The pandemic has enabled these online spaces to develop, but now we are emerging into a safer physical space on the horizon - seek out those spaces where physical meets can happen.
We helped R&A Collaborations set up their Craft Coffee Mornings during the pandemic which have enabled a community of makers to come together and support one another, as well as our Thriving and Surviving as an Artist course with Rosalind Davis and Justin Hibbs a new online community of artists was formed to help support one another.



ARTSTHREAD: Do you have a couple of success stories you could tell us about?

Deborah Parkes: After leaving her formal arts education in Cyprus and then pausing her practice to start a family, Emma Housley was looking to re-ignite her practice and applied for a Creative Pathways Bursary in 2019. She was interviewed for that here at Clayhill and during her time here was given studio space and an exhibition. This has helped her go on to develop a confident portfolio of works, find gallery representation, put together her own solo show and apply for exhibitions and awards.
Having the time and space she has needed to create has been vital and the support to help her leap and take risks has been equally important. You can read all about Emma about this in an interview with her gallery here and find more out about her current work over on Instagram here.

Amanda Lynch was another artist from the Creative Pathways programme who took part in a few events that we ran and our online summer school. After the summer school she approached us about an idea for a mail art project called Restriction. We worked together and helped develop plans with her new online network The Correspondence Collective.



An Open Call was put out during the beginning of 2021 for work inspired by the Mail Art movement and the restrictions experienced due to covid-19. The result was ‘Restriction’, an online exhibition of over 1,000 pieces of miniature art created by more than 200 artists from all around the globe. The exhibition has been archived here at Clayhill Arts and is available to view for people visiting. A digital documentation of the exhibition along with artist interviews and the online programme of talks we ran can be viewed on our website.



Find out more information from the Clayhill Arts website.

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