Our VISION
Kyndred Clay is a forthcoming, fiscally‑sponsored community ceramics studio tucked into Newport’s historic East Row district. We enrich Newport, Kentucky’s arts scene with thoughtfully designed classes and apprenticeships that celebrate today’s emerging talent while honoring the diverse cultural lineages that shaped our craft. Our programs foster intergenerational and intercultural bonds, deepen participants’ sense of place, and generate lasting economic opportunities through the resilient medium of clay.
Drawing on a mosaic of local influences, including contemporary artists and artisans, native Kentucky clays, Indigenous pottery traditions, the innovations of Marie Louise McLaughlin and Isaac Scott-Hathaway, and the refined tile‑making techniques introduced by immigrant artisans — Kyndred Clay provides Newport residents and neighboring communities a welcoming space to create, learn, and connect.
Through craft, storytelling, and education, Kyndred Clay revives Newport’s ceramic heritage, honors the many contributors who have enriched the city, and fuels a vibrant arts ecosystem that supports education, heritage tourism, and enduring cultural impact.
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A full range of Classes and workshops teach the breadth of ceramics techniques, including: design, throwing, hand‑building, Surface Decoration, glazing,and firing functional and sculptural wares.
With Each session weaving technical skills with insights into regional geologies and stories of the myriad craft traditions and historic innovations that contribute to our region’s ceramics heritage.
Core programming
Mindful Making. Critical Material Culture
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Teen & Adult Apprenticeships
Work side‑by‑side with professional craftspeople, and receive tailored mentorship that respects your intersectional identities, individual strengths, and the full spectrum of ceramic traditions.
Training builds on a foundation of Basic ceramics skills, with lessons in contemporary design, studio operations, and small‑business entrepreneurship — facilitating career exploration, and preparing graduates to enter Arts-based Employment, freelance commissions, studio Assistantships, or arts‑tourism projects.
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We place sustainability at the heart of our Operations. We source clays From Regional Producers, recycle Clay slurry & scrap in House, utilize clay settling tanks to reduce runoff into the sewer system, and operate energy‑efficient electric kilns.
Beyond the studio floor, we foster ethical practices through fair wages, sliding‑scale tuition, and collaborations with local schools and environmental groups,ensuring that every piece of pottery contributes to a greener, more inclusive creative ecosystem.
VALUES & VISION
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Grounding our collective in Kentucky is a deliberate act of love—for each other, for this land, and for the layered histories of resistance and creativity that shape this region.
From Indigenous survivance and Black freedom movements to Appalachian labor organizing and queer rural life, Kentucky holds powerful legacies. We create in conversation with these intersecting lineages—through storytelling, embodiment, and artwork that reflects deep solidarity with our human and more-than-human kin. -
At Kyndred Clay, we draw inspiration from Mia Mingus’s vision of access intimacy — a deep, mutual sense of trust, connection, and ease — that comes from spaces where all parts of us are welcome. As such, we aim for Kyndred Clay to be a space where visitors, students, and studio members feel welcome in their full depth, creativity, and complexity.
We are an explicitly:intergenerational
intercultural
Queer-, Trans-, and Neuro- affirming space.
To ensure studio access across diverse lived-experiences, we offer:
Sliding‑scale tuition
Neuro-affirming classes and apprenticeships.
Wheelchair accessible entrance, bathroom, and workstations.
Live Transcribed instruction (via iPad & the live transcribe app).
Family Friendly Class Options.
If your access needs are not met by the above practices, please get in touch, so we can work together to better meet you needs. -
At Kyndred, we believe thriving doesn't happen in isolation — it grows in relationship, in community, and through shared commitment.
Kyndred Clay is a shared, intergenerational & intercultural studio that brings seniors, young professionals, and teens of different backgrounds and lived-experiences together in mutual exchange of knowledge, stories, and cultural practices.
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Craft is the heart of our studio. It’s how we connect, how we show up, and how we practice new worlds into being.
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For us, liberation is a creative rhythm — An intentional, cyclical process of:
Unlearning
Deepening self-awareness
Living authentically
Sustaining one another through access, care, and cultural creation
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Kyndred Clay joins a growing arts ecosystem in Northern Kentucky, and a broader movements of artists, organizers, culture-bearers, and community-builders who also know that change begins in relationship, in practice, and in place.
By rooting our studio in Newport, Kentucky, we hope Kyndred Clay can help nurture self‑actualization through embodied craft, and contribute to broader communities of care.
Support Kyndred Clay