Stepping into Volunteering - my journey with the Northern Potters Association (NPA)

I think I joined the NPA right when we moved up North. I was a member of the London Potters (LP) before and also the Dacorum & Chiltern Potters Guild (DCPG), and especially the DCPG made me feel right at home. I think somewhat it was a geographical problem because the LPs were too far away from me, but the DCPG was close and very personal, with regular face‑to‑face knowledge‑sharing meetings, coffee afternoons, selling events as well as wood‑firing events. I loved it.

Finding My Pottery Community Up North

So, I joined the NPA in 2019 and went to the AGM in York as well as other events. In many ways the NPA has the same issue as I encountered with the LPs. The geographical area is huge, spanning from the Midlands all the way to the Scottish border and from the East to the West coast.

The people were lovely and I have fond memories of the lovely Joan Hardie standing out as a beacon for the NPA, a very active volunteer with a lot of knowledge in both ceramics and the history of the NPA. Over the years, I became more and more involved and took over the role of vice chair in 2021 and became chair in January 2022. Back then, I wrote a little wishlist of things I hoped to achieve as chair – the paper ran into 3 pages 😊.

Nadine at Pots in the Pens

Volunteering - Stepping up and building connections across a huge region

I remember that one of my first tasks in 2020 was to compile the mailing list for the magazine and send it to the printers. It makes me shudder now, thinking of how unsafe this was. So a key part of my tenure was our move away from scattered Excel spreadsheets to a safer online membership platform. This has been in place for 3 years now and it has certainly made the life of our volunteers a lot easier. It’s secure, GDPR compliant, and it means our volunteers no longer have to juggle endless versions of documents back and forth via email. I am a little bit proud of this achievement.

The platform also allows us to run events and I can now run an online event on a regular basis to engage with all members, which I hope makes everyone feel included. We certainly had some lovely feedback from members. Along with the platform, I think I have quietly been ticking off a lot of the things on my list, and with more than 800 members, our NPA is in a very strong position.

I am now thinking about retiring as chair to free up some time to allow me to make more ceramics, but hey, let’s watch this space.

What I can say with confidence is that I have found some lovely friends in the NPA and I am a very happy member and proud to be able to serve as chair.

Nadine is writing a regular column for the NPA magazine