As we've lept forwards into spring, we have been looking back over the first few months of 2022.
It sure has been a busy time at M.Y.O which is refreshing as we start to emerge from the recent pandemic years. We've worked with some wonderful companies so far this year, making charitable cards with Visa U.K for the Great Ormond Street Childrens Hospital.
We've hosted workshops for businesses both in our Borough studio and off-site at their own premises. We're super flexible and will happily jump into a taxi with bags full of creative goodies. And as the world gradulally returns to the city offices, we have seen a welcomed increase in corporate bookings.
With this year's Great Pottery Throw Down showing on Channel 4 in February, we saw a huge increase in demand for pottery workshops which also coincided with Valentine's Day. Our kiln has been working non-stop to keep firing all the beautiful and weirdly wondering boob pots and terracotta planters!
We ran a successful offsite workshop for Warner Music for their wellness week where guests painted thier own plant pots.
We are also seeing more hen parties and birthdays at the weekends and we are running both private and public classes all week, during both the daytime and evenings until 9pm. We have also seen an increase in mixed gender groups and more men coming to classes which is wonderful.
We have been trying to encourage more men to join us for creative endeavors for some time and we are starting to see that now happening. As you may have heard, there is a real concern for men's mental health and encouraging men to find ways to talk about their mental health and wellbeing. Art is a great way to help with that, therefore seeing an uptake in more men at the workshop is a very positive thing indeed and we aim to build on that as much as we can do.
We have also launched some new workshops for this year, including an Everlasting Flower Workshop making paper flowers, and a spring wreath class; our hosts loved the Christmas wreath workshops and actually missed making them with customers, so a spring version was a welcome return.
Our Macramé plant hanger workshop has had a resurgence in Q1 of this year with companies such as Lightricks and Google getting in on the action. We're hoping to develop a smaller macrame session to run at some festivals this summer so keep an eye out for those!
All in all, as we head into the warmer months and longer days, we are feeling a positive energy in the air, filled with hope for a year ahead where people begin to return to activities and trying new things.
Have a look at our class calendar view all the workshops we have coming up!