Banks Mill Studios - Abbie Sunter video transcript

[A white University of Derby logo slides from the bottom of the screen, with a tall brown brick building in the background]

[Update beat pop music]

[Cut to Abbie who is wearing a black hoodie with an orange apron and is smiling. Abbie has medium, brown, curly hair and wears large, brown, circle glasses.] 

Hi! My name is Abby Sunter, I'm a ceramic artist here at Banks Mill Studios. I work with clay and I make ceramic sculptures. 

[Cut to camera slowly scanning around Abbie's studio, with two work benches, various ceramic sculptures hanging on the wall, and a large shelving unit with different-shaped clay mugs and cups.]

Working here at Banks Mill, having a community of artists that come from all different backgrounds has been really helpful for me. I've been able to get advice from people who work in different areas and it means you can collaborate as well on different things. 

[Cut to Abbie talking to the camera, gesturing with her hands]

So you can make different types of work even though you are sticking to your own thing. You've got the opportunity to work with other people. It's really easy to get to the town center, it's close to where we live, I've got links with the university so I'm currently studying for my Master's Degree, it's 10 minutes down the road so I've got access to my studio space and the university equipment. It's got everything that I need and it's affordable as well! It is a really flexible space, we can move things around, we've also had the opportunity to move from different studios. 

[Cut to a wide view of the studio. A man with a black shirt leans over a throwing wheel and crafts a tall, slender pot]

So when I first started, I had a studio on the top floor that was a little bit smaller, and very quickly it became obvious that we needed more room and we've got the option to move in and out of different rooms in the building when they're available. 

[Cut to Abbie talking to the camera]

But luckily this one was available! We could scale up, we could kind of scale up production as well and it's just been great to work in. Community engagement within Banks Mills been really useful for my practice because you get advice from people who might have already done things, like fairs and exhibitions, and they can let you know what that space is like. How many people were there, whether it's actually worth doing because you don't always know until you go, but having people who are, maybe a few years ahead of you, and

having that advice come from them, you know that they're actually telling the truth and it's been really useful to be able to hear that from people who are in the same position as me but a couple of steps ahead. 

With University students we've been able to have people come in and I've been able to offer them advice and they've been able to give it back to us in terms of things like social media management and having people run Twitter feeds. Especially on the road up to exhibitions, if you're not entirely sure how to do that, that's been really invaluable because they're gaining experience but you're actually able to get something from it for free so that's been a really good thing. 

[Cut to white exhibition room with different paintings hanging in different frames on the wall. People quickly walk in and out of the exhibition, live-action video that is sped up]

Events at Banks Mill are really good. My favourite one is Open Studios which we have at the end of November, every single year.

[Cut to Abbie talking to the screen]

Since we were here in 2018, we've just seen more and more people come in and we get repeat customers now so we have people who, you know, kind of met them the first time we were here in 2018 that continue to come back every November. And it's great because you recognize those faces and they want to keep supporting you as artists and Open Studios is fantastic for that. Banks will help to promote the business, they've got the newsletter so that's really helpful. Especially if I have exhibitions in the foyer space, on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. Again, when it comes to Open Studios they're really good with the social media aspect of advertising what I do and a lot of people find me through that. That's where I get most of my business these days, so having Banks Mill just be supporting my attempts at social media is really useful because it's just one less thing that I have to think about.

[Cut to back screen with white University of Derby logo]