Rat City Studios:
Building Community Through Clay!
Mission
Rat City Studios & Rain City Clay are sister studios located in West Seattle and White Center. They are vibrant, creative communities that offer everything from beginning pottery classes to firing services for local potters. RCS & RCC bring people together with shared experiences and engage and build community through clay. Explore our community by taking a class or stopping by for an event!
About Rat City Studios
https://ratcitystudios.com
@ratcitystudios
Location: 2410 SW 106th Street, Seattle, WA 98146
Visits: by Appointment Only Please
Rat City Studios is an open creative clay studio that provides a supportive environment for makers working independently in clay and artists who seek to take the next step down their paths as potters. This welcoming studio, located in White Center, is home to founder-potter-instructor-author Deb Schwartzkopf. RCS offers monthly studio access to independent study participants, skill-building online clay workshops, and a firing service for local artists. We support artists at many levels through experiential learning and shared experience.
About Rain City Clay
https://raincityclay.com/
@rain.city.clay
4208 SW 100th Street, Seattle, WA 98146
Visits: by Appointment Only Please
Rain City Clay offers classes for all levels, skill-building workshops, artist studios, and yearly community events. Located in West Seattle, we are a vibrant creative community passionate about working with clay. Our offerings are aimed at cultivating imagination, bringing people together, and facilitating a space where everyone has a place to foster their creative side.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement
As a business owner, educator, curator, and artist, I recognize my essential role in dismantling unjust and inequitable systems within my own organization and in the larger community. I am committed and dedicated to this lifelong process.
I am continually learning and understanding the ways in which my background and the opportunities offered to me have benefited me. I recognize my position of privilege in an inequitable, racist, and non-inclusive system. Through this lens, I am committed to making measurable and lasting changes that will foster racial equity, encourage diversity, and cultivate a more inclusive community. I believe that a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive community is a better community.
As a business owner and through my business, Rat City Studios, I stand in solidarity against racism in the clay community and the systemic inequities and injustices that our BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities face. I will endeavor to actively use the resources of RCS to facilitate sustainable change and foster a creative community that is safe, inclusive, and equitable.
I am posting my statement and goals on my website. Please support and help hold me accountable as I continually practice, learn, and transform.
Furthering Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
In June of 2020, I made a list of commitments to further Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for myself and my business. I added these to my website on the RCS "about" page. After a year of working on these, I was reminded to check-in. Here is where I am at.
1. Education: Continued training on being an anti-capitalist and equitable, diverse, inclusive business and sharing these with my community
- Equitable Business Incubator with Wanderwell
- Town Hall with Rachel Rodgers
- PNW Board DEI Training/ Conversations with Alina Santillan, Director of Racial Equity for Seattle Center Cohort
- Bystander Intervention to stop anti-Asian/American and xenophobic harassment. with Hollaback
-ArtsFund five-week Board Leadership Training Fall 2021
2. Participation: Continued support of Duwamish REAL RENT
https://www.realrentduwamish.org/
Real Rent calls on people who live and work in Seattle to make rent payments to the Duwamish Tribe. Though the city named for the Duwamish leader Chief Seattle thrives, the Tribe has yet to be justly compensated for their land, resources, and livelihood.
3. Financial: Increasing the percentage of business-related purchases to be from BIPOC owned businesses- aiming at 30%
I am keeping this as a point of importance and decision-making as I find contractors & shop for regular needs.
4. Inclusion: bringing the names, artwork, and ideas of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ to the classroom at RCC, studio meetings, educational situations, curated events, and organizations.
- I have been part of signing a document to be given to arts organizations before I accept contracts that ask if the organization is diversifying instructors, jurors, leaders, and more.
- I am making an effort to broaden my knowledge of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ Artists
- I am making an effort to bring BIPOC & LGBTQ+ instructors to my online classes as paid guest presenters.
- introducing the community to diverse artists through handmade pots collection, marketing posts, and educational posters in the RCC studio.
- creating information posters about pronouns in the studio to promote familiarity and acceptance.
Introductions of instructors and participants with the inclusion of pronouns at RCC. Photo roster with first names and pronouns at RCS.
5. Awareness: taking racial equity, diversity, and inclusion into account as I make decisions
This is a change that is coming into my life more and more- as I pick what I read, as I pick what music or podcasts fill my days, as I pick what organization I donate to, as I choose what take-out to order… I am working toward lasting changes in how I see the world.
6. other steps.
- offering 10 scholarships to 10-week classes each session at Rain City Clay. This is approximately $9000 a year in discounts on our in-person classes at RCC.
- participating in a Group raffle that raised $10,000+ for BLM and BIPOC organizations
- offering Inclusivity Awards for online classes. 50+ spaces awarded in 2020 workshops.
- bring forward quotes from BIPOC at morning meetings - Here is a favorite podcast featuring Robin Wall Kimmerer
- studying other arts organizations that forward underrepresented groups to learn.
- read Me and White Supremacy
- read The Gift
- reading Chief Seattle and the Town that Took His Name
- questioning the application processes I create and making sure they are as equitable as possible
- March 2021: 360 reviews of myself by assistants, visiting artists, and 2 years previous assistants/ meeting with a coach
- May 2021: self/ peer review of assistants with time for feedback and goal-setting
- Co-creating team building tenants with my crew/ making time to discuss/ foster safe space and build lines of communication
- adding an email suffix that includes pronouns, and land acknowledgment
This is just a starting place for change and I recognize that these efforts will develop and grow as I continue to educate myself and become more aware of how to plan and implement these goals into my art practice and business structure.
I invite you to give your support and offer suggestions and encouragement in this effort. (I'm able to grow through the support of your voice and engagement.)
The mission of Rat City Studios is to engage and build community through clay – one person, one neighborhood, and one experience at a time. We believe in the power of art to connect – to connect people in all walks of life, to bring light and strength to ideas, and to be an agent for change in the world.
Rat City Studios, where we live, work, garden, and make pottery is on the traditional land of the first people of Seattle, The Duwamish People, past and present. We are long-term visitors and honor with gratitude the land itself and the Duwamish Tribe.
More About Rat City Studios!
How did Rat City Studios get its name? (link)
Naming of the kilns! (link)
Moving to Seattle (link)
RCS Year End Review
This is an overview of the year: The people, the costs of doing business, the highlights! This is the first year, hopefully of many that a review has been made. Enjoy and come back for more in the future! Each year I try and capture our efforts in a Year-END Review…
Here is a link to the last several years from 2017-2021!…
