Stoke-on-Trent in England to be renamed…by China

Stoke-on-Trent has been chosen to star in a new marketing campaign, which is designed to encourage Chinese people to learn more about some of Britain’s lesser-known places…by giving them a new name.

Stoke-on-Trent is one of 101 points of interest around Britain which have been selected by national tourism agency VisitBritain to feature in a ground-breaking campaign which invites Chinese people to come up with the most fitting, amusing, meaningful, and memorable Chinese names for British places, events, and things.

©VisitStoke

Over a ten-week period VisitBritain will use a variety of online and offline advertising, social and digital media and media relations to invite people in China to give ‘GREAT Chinese Names for GREAT Britain’. The campaign hopes to help attract even more visitors from the rapidly-growing tourism Chinese market, and encourage Chinese visitors to travel further afield around Britain.

Stoke-on-Trent, the ‘home’ of the UK’s “Potteries” was selected as being potentially of great interest to Chinese people, yet currently without a Chinese name.

©VisitStoke

Joss Croft, Marketing Director at VisitBritain says: “Names are very important in China and this campaign will raise the profile of Stoke-on-Trent and of course lead to more visits from such a lucrative country. This is a fun way of getting Chinese people to think about and describe some places in Britain, especially as some of the British names of these places or things are meaningless or difficult to literally translate or even pronounce for the Chinese. But it doesn’t stop there, we’d like local communities to get behind this campaign and suggest other places and locations to rename via our hashtag #greatnames.”

In 2013 China was Britain’s 13^th most important inbound tourism market in terms of revenue. The number of Chinese nationals travelling overseas is expected to top 100 million this year for the first time.

©VisitStoke

Stoke-on-Trent’s new Chinese name is likely to be unveiled in March. In the meantime all suggestions are welcomed via the campaign hashtag #greatnames.

For further details about Stoke-on-Trent and The Potteries, visit www.visitstoke.co.uk.

The Beautiful Game

The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent will be commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the First World War in a variety of ways between now, and 2018.

The creation of a life-sized replica WWI trench in its grounds is just one way. Another is the Echoes of War exhibition, which runs through to April 26^th, 2015.

Included in this is a ceramic interpretation of a world-famous football match, which took place on the front line between soldiers representing Britain and Germany.

The Beautiful Game by Stephen Dixon – featuring glazed ceramic figures with digital transfer printing, and mounted on a “found” textile football pitch – commemorates the extraordinary events of Christmas Day 1914 when an unofficial truce called a temporary halt to the carnage on the Western Front.

It is widely documented, by soldiers from all ranks and both sides, that improvised football matched took place in no-man’s land during the truce, though their reports of the scores vary dramatically.

The most commonly quoted scoreline, however, is a 3-2 win for Germany! This work adopts the genre of Crested China, a type of souvenir ware produced in The Potteries by the firm of W.H.Goss and many others, which was at the height of its popularity during the Great War.

For further information about The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, visit www.stoke.gov.uk/museums

A New Wedgwood Experience for 2015!

The Wedgwood Estate, in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, has welcomed visitors for more than 250 years. But the latest chapter in Wedgwood’s long history, promises to be one of the most impressive of all – as the world-famous manufacturer prepares to open a new £34 million World of Wedgwood’ in time for Easter, 2015.

The state-of-the-art “visitor experience” will feature an interactive hands-on factory tour, and the chance to spend time in the Wedgwood Museum, buy fine china and ceramics in a flagship store, and dine in the Wedgwood Tearoom or Restaurant.

The interactive factory tour will introduce visitors to all elements of ceramic production and decoration processes, and will showcase some of the best ceramic craftsmen and women in the industry. Visitors of all generations will be able to learn new skills, including throwing a pot under the watchful eyes of master potters. And the design studios will incorporate the latest interactive techniques to enable visitors to appreciate and experience the skills and artistry involved in making ceramics.

The Wedgwood Museum houses the world famous Wedgwood Collection, and was named museum of the year as recently as 2009. It includes ceramics and a huge range of documentation, manuscripts, correspondence, factory equipment and models – exploring every possible aspect of Wedgwood’s fascinating past.

Wedgwood’s location, in woodlands and landscaped gardens, was the result of the vision of the Wedgwood family who masterminded the factory’s move to the countryside in the 1940s. The World of Wedgwood will include woodland walks managed jointly with the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust; and a new courtyard (featuring fountains, gardens and outdoor seating) will host a variety of annual events, from music and food festivals to family fun activities.

The existing Wedgwood Visitor Centre will close to all visitors during the start of 2015 while the finishing touches are put to the next visitor experience, The World of Wedgwood. For further details, visit http://www.wedgwoodvisitorcentre.com and http://www.visitstoke.co.uk.

The attraction of ceramics

 

If you’re interested in European travel, and ceramics, then this blog is for you…

A couple of years ago, the City of Limoges took the initiative in creating a European Urban Network for Innovation in Ceramics.

Limoges Cathedral 

Officially, this was done “to foster greater co-operation between several European cities with a ceramic tradition”. In practice, what it means of course is that there’s now a One-Stop-Shop for further details about European cities with ceramics at their heart.

Take a look at De Porceleyne Fles (Royal Delft) in Holland (www.royaldelft.com), for example, which was established in 1653, and is the last remaining Delftware factory from the 17th century. The world famous Royal Delftware is still entirely hand-painted; and a visit to Royal Delft these days offers a journey through the history of Blue Delft and Royal Delft, and a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the development and production process.

Delft Blue

In Faenza, Italy, the International Ceramic Museum (www.micfaenza.org) – founded in 1908 – is the main attraction in this historic city, and it contains one of the largest ceramic collections in the world.

Faenza

The Adrien Dubouché National Porcelain Museum (www.musee-adriendubouche.fr) in Sèvres-Limoges, France, contains an exceptional collection of ceramics from different periods, and features everything from interpretations of manufacturing techniques to contemporary design.

Germany claims two major ceramic centres – Höhr-Grenzhausen in Rhineland-Palatinate, and the museum complex of Porzellanikon in Bavaria. While the former boasts the magnificent Keramikmuseum Westerwald (www.keramikmuseum.de), the latter contains two centuries of porcelain history where, 200 years ago,Carolus Magnus Hutschenreuther founded the first porcelain factory an area which has subsequently become the centre of the German porcelain industry.

Finally, Stoke-on-Trent in the UK – known world-wide these days simply as “The Potteries”. It’s the base for all of the famous names in English ceramics, and also home to the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery (www.stokemuseums.org.uk/visit/pmag/), which contains the finest collection of Staffordshire ceramics in the world.

The European Route of Ceramics, made up of these destinations has already been recognised as a Cultural Route by the Council of Europe. And it will soon be featured on a new shared website: www.viaceram.eu.