Northcote Pottery, 142-144 Weston Street, Brunswick East

My co workers and I took Maria VanHee's Beginners hand building class for $295 over a course of 6 weeks. The classes were 3 hours and they took place once a week. In the class descriptions, it simply says “Course fee includes: a bag of clay, decorating materials & firing”. I would not recommend this class for anyone, even beginners. It lacked appropriate tools, resources and structure and the results were boring and non-challenging classes. We started the first week off with learning how to make pinch pots which although elementary, was enjoyable. We were told to keep these pots wet by covering them to prevent drying. At no time during the 6 weeks, were we told of a realistic time line for leather working, basquing or glazing so that we could have finished products by the end of the 6th week. This type of confusion and lack of foresight created a huge backup of students needing to dry their stoneware goods for basquing and glazing which had to be all done out of the 6 week mark. We were told by Maria that, if we mentioned that we were in her class, we could continue glazing these items even after our 6 weeks stint. However, this is not the case as staff at Northcote Pottery was not aware or growing tired of this arrangement. Maria did tell us that 3 hrs blocks for 6 weeks was not enough time to make many items but she should have catered and changed her curriculum so that each student was able to walk away with a few items that were finished and not rushed. This is very poor planning on her part, a class is only as good as the teacher and it is an understatement that this class was extremely poor. The lack of structure and more challenging techniques left students bored and feeling blasé about their creations. After learning how to pinch pots and coil, we were given a project of making a pot with curves. This lasted for 4 weeks in which we were not told if it would be glazed. I asked at week 3 if we were to glaze any of our items and we did not get a straight answer. Only towards the last week, after pressure from other students, were we introduced to glazing which we shared with another class and hand painting our pots. Even then, Maria seemed reluctant for us to use lots of dye, so much so that when one student ran out of dye, she merely diluted it and ruined her item. Her teaching gave us little confidence, as she taught from hand written notes and offered no new techniques that a primary school child would not have known. Resources such as plastic bags, newspaper and cardboard for wrapping wet works and making templates respectively were scarce. So much so, that one student provided cardboard for making templates for the entire class. Should a course/teacher not supply such essential items? If not, it would have been nice to be told to bring such items because we were not told at any stage to do so. For $295, I expected that we would be given ample supplies from tools, glaze to paint. In fact, for the three of us, we could have used our $900 and bought a mini kiln instead.