TALKS AT THE LANE: Becky Little, Tom Morton, and Julian Stair.

TALKS AT THE LANE: Becky Little, Tom Morton, and Julian Stair.

We return in the new year with the next instalment of our third season, continuing a programme shaped by process, material knowledge and creative practice, unfolding across conversation, exhibition and workshop.

We are delighted to welcome Becky Little (Rebearth) and Tom Morton (Arc Architects) in conversation with English potter, academic and writer Julian Stair.

Date and Time: Tuesday 10 March 2026
Doors Open: 5.30pm for 6.00pm start
Location: Custom Lane, 1 Customs Wharf, EH6 6AL

Becky Little and Tom Morton collaborate as artist-builder and architect through a shared practice shaped by long engagement with earth, making, and place. Their work treats making as a way of knowing—learning through building, shaping, and sustained attention to materials, landscapes, and the relationships that emerge through working with them over time.

Becky is an artist, builder, and teacher whose practice centres on unfired earth and natural fibres. With a background in construction and conservation, she works closely with local subsoils and seasonal materials to create buildings, sculptures, and material-led artworks. Her work explores earth as a living, intelligent material, and asks how practices of making might move from extraction towards care, reciprocity, and repair.

Tom works across architecture, research, and advocacy through Arc Architects, the Scottish Ecological Design Association, and Earth Building UK & Ireland. His work focuses on the meeting of natural and built environments, developing place-responsive architectural approaches to the nature and climate crisis.

Together, they work with earth as collaborator rather than resource. Their projects unfold through close attention to place—its materials, histories, and ongoing processes—across art, architecture, and community contexts, inviting reflection on how we live with and as part of the ground beneath our feet.

Julian Stair is one of the UK’s leading potters. He studied at Camberwell School of Art and the RCA. He has exhibited internationally since 1982 and has work in over 30 public collections internationally. Relevant exhibitions include Quietus: The Vessel, Death and the Human Body, (MIMA, National Museum Wales Cardiff, Winchester Cathedral, Somerset House, London 2012-14, Manchester Cathedral 2016). Julian is a leading historian of English studio ceramics. He completed a PhD at the RCA in 2002 researching the critical origins of English studio pottery and has written extensively. He was awarded an OBE in 2022 for his services to ceramics.

Copies of Earthbound Orkney will be available for sale during the exhibition and on the night of the event.

If tickets sell out for this event, we will start accepting waitlist entries. Please add a separate entry for each attendee that you would like to add to the waitlist.

To receive a full refund, we ask that attendees cancel at least 48 hours before the event starts.

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