We are brick makers

Flow Bracey who is one of our Earth Build Trainee’s reflects on her first involvement with GG as a Brick Project Assistant for the making of our first permanent garden, the Triangle site.

As our Story Garden days draw to a close, we look forward towards our new home, on the other side of York way, where Global Generation has been given a permanent place to host a community garden. In this garden there will be three new buildings, one of which, the office, will be built from clay bricks. These were handmade in the Brick Workshop, Story Garden, which I assisted running last summer, a project led by Nadire - ceramicist and Global Generation Community Maker.

In central London, we are surrounded by a constantly developing built environment, and sometimes familiar areas of our city become unrecognisable. Global Generation’s Brick Making project demystifies the ideas of building developments by zooming in on London’s vernacular building material – the brick.

The space we will be building will have passed through the hands of hundreds of volunteers and community members, by each contributing just a few of the bricks to the whole building. We will show how together we can have autonomy over building our own spaces by working from scratch. 

The bricks we have been making are made from London Clay, slip (a mixture of the clay and water) and kiln dried sand, created using a wooden square shaped mould, a paintbrush for the slip and a cheese wire.

As a Brick Project Assistant, one of my roles was to fill two buckets of brick clay in preparation for the workshop. The clay came from the site of H.G. Matthews Brickworks, a brick factory in Bellingdon, 33 miles north-west of Story Garden. It is dug from their local site and processed with sand to strengthen. H.G. Matthews kindly donated the clay to our community project and delivered it to Story Garden with a crane.

Unfolding the tonne bag to reveal our daily excavation in the block of clay was like leaning into a cold, damp cave. The easiest way to get the clay out was to claw and scrape at the walls of the hole and fill the bucket fistful by fistful. I was accustomed to having the skin on my arms tinted orange and my hands feeling softened, exfoliated from handling the sandy-clay all day.

During a workshop we would demonstrate how to make a brick, then the participants would be free to explore making as many bricks as they desired by wedging, shaping and throwing the clay into the mould. The youngest participant to make a brick was four years old; they stood on a block to reach the tabletop. The lump of clay which you use to make each brick is slightly smaller than a football, and is heavy, however even young brick-makers managed heaving the lump of clay above their head. Once thrown into the mould, you have to hope that the clay has been pushed far enough into each corner in order to get square edges to your brick. A cacophony of loud bangs breaks out around the brick workshop, as each brick-maker drops their mould onto the table to shift the clay down into those corners. I always loved the contrast between the contemplative preparation of the clay and this noisy factory-like atmosphere (we had ear-defenders to hand, for participants who may be overstimulated by the sound). By giving some further knocks of the mould on the table on each of the four sides, you can loosen the brick, eventually being able to tip it out.

Myself and Nadire created stamps from found objects, wire and fired clay to press into the sides of the bricks. Workshop participants made the most beautiful and unique designs from the select number of stamps. This was the final stage of making a brick before they get left on the drying shelf and sent back to the brick factory in Bellingdon for firing. In the kiln, they will turn from a sandy orange into a deep red.

The brick-makers are able to visit Global Generation’s new garden and see their contribution amongst the wall, their brick one of many. We are so grateful for everyone who came to the Story Garden to make a brick with us, and I can’t wait for these uniquely embellished brick walls to take form in the new garden.

Love to the Brick Team – Nadire, Sophia and Harry – it was the best summer ever.

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Notes from the Garden