Regular readers of this blog will know that, along with my wife Michaela, I make a living through a small business called seatree. We call it our on-going experiement in trying to live creatively and sustainably. We make art from ceramics and other stuff, run workshops and poetry things, and somehow it has worked – the adventure continues. We feel so blessed to be able to make our lives from thee ingredients, in this beautiful place.

Then along came the pandemic.

At first, particularly for Michaela (who is the one who does the organising) we panicked. Our outgoings are small, but overnight, all the galleries we work with closed, and we had to cancel our workshops. Like many others we faced the real posibility that everything we had worked for was going to fall apart. I even started to think about going back into social work, which was a terrifying prospect from my ‘escaped’ perspective.

But then we started to get creative. We spent hours setting up our website shop. We developed things like our workshops in a tin. Like the rest of the world, we started doing things via zoom. We discovered that the new normal could still be creative, and the veg in the garden grows just as well in lockdown- better in fact as we have had more time to develop our growing spaces. It is quite possible that things will never go back to how they were, and for us, that is OK. We need change- both as individuals and as a wider society.

However, some changes need investment that is beyond our financial reach.

In order to continue to run workshops, we need to create more workspace. This means re-purposing our large shed, clearing out a lot of the things we have in there at the moment and making some socialy distanced work stations.

We need to sell more things direct, and this means creating a better display area for things we make here, as well as a way to manage stock better.

Put simply. we need a new shed! A beautiful. hand crafted seatree hut. Even doing all the work ourselves, we think this will cost in the region of £5K, which is a lot of money for us.

We have taken a plunge into the unknown, otherwise known as crowd funding.

“How does this work?” I hear you ask.

You follow this link to our Go Fund Me initiative.

You are not giving something for nothing though;

For every donation, we will create for you a limited edition decoration and an invitation to our grand opening!

For every donation over £50, we will also include a hand-drawn seatree poem.

And for or every donation over £100, we will offer you a poetry or pottery workshop, or a piece of ceramic art.

Every seed you sow, we will nurture.

So, there we are. Donate if you feel we are worth it. If not, then no worries, but perhaps you can help spread the word?