One kiln. One year. A whole lot made: Mud Hub turns one

Former Lucy & Yak team member Sammy built Mud Hub to make pottery more accessible and community-focused. One year, more than 300 customers, over 400 classes and roughly 2,000 finished pieces later, Norwich has made it its own.

At Mud Hub, people share tools, glazes, biscuits and strong opinions about mugs. Clay gets everywhere. Beginners sit beside experienced makers. Someone might arrive with a precise plan for what they want to create, while the person next to them is still insisting they are not creative. Give them a few weeks.

 

This busy, slightly chaotic, everyone-mucking-in studio in Norwich has just turned one. We are particularly happy about that because its founder, Sammy, was once part of our Cambridge shop team, and Lucy & Yak helped fund Mud Hub’s first kiln. The kiln mattered. Roughly 2,000 finished pieces have now been fired in it. But this story is about everything Sammy and the community have built around it.
 

Clay, community and a missing space

Sammy has worked with clay for nearly 20 years. At different moments, it has helped with physical recovery, wellbeing, loneliness and creative blocks. It has never been just a material to her. It can be a way back into your body, your imagination or the world around you.

 

While working in the ceramics studio at Wensum Lodge, run by Norfolk County Council, she saw what a pottery space could become. People came to make, but a community formed around them. When Wensum Lodge closed in 2023 following funding cuts, hundreds of people lost more than access to equipment. They lost a place where they had learned, connected and belonged. Sammy did not want simply to recreate what had closed. She wanted to build something more flexible, accessible and relevant to what people need now.

 

The idea sharpened while she was working at Lucy & Yak and in pottery studios, and raising her daughter. At Lucy & Yak, she saw that a business could make money, treat people well and retain its values. Her work with clay also showed her what she wanted to protect: the craft, the learner and the community around both.

 

Pottery can already be expensive and difficult to access. Sammy wanted to prove that a studio could put people and creativity first while operating as a proper, lasting business. So she decided to build the thing she wished existed.

MAKING MUD HUB

Sammy found the right space at Carrow House, where Norwich Unity Hub was developing a home for community-focused organisations. With support from Fuse, a non-profit that helps people get started, she established Mud Hub as a Community Interest Company. Money made by the studio goes back into the space, its community and keeping the craft alive.

 

Getting from idea to opening took a year of training and paperwork, followed by six months of physically building the studio. Sammy worked at Lucy & Yak throughout that first year and stayed for another three months while Mud Hub found its feet.

 

She was also navigating enormous changes in her personal life while saying goodbye to the Wensum Lodge community.

 

Sammy credits the people around her at Lucy & Yak with helping her feel capable of more than she thought. That belief made relying on herself and the new business feel less frightening. Leaving was difficult because, for Sammy, Lucy & Yak had never felt like just a job. The friendships and connections remain part of Mud Hub’s story today.

 

The support for the first kiln was another important vote of confidence. For a new studio, it was a significant piece of equipment and a leap of faith in what Sammy was trying to create.

The good kind of chaos

One year on, Mud Hub has found its feet without becoming too polished for its own good. More than 300 customers have come through the doors for over 400 classes, courses and workshops. Members use the studio regularly. People arrive for ongoing classes and one-off sessions. There are subsidised kids’ clubs and classes with other social enterprises. A free Heritage Open Days tile workshop welcomed 180 people to make together.

 

There is no single type of Mud Hub person, and nobody needs to arrive artistic, confident or experienced. Some people come for a creative outlet. For others, it becomes a social life, a bit of breathing space or the beginning of taking their creativity seriously.

 

People make friends. They check in on one another. They share ideas, tools and glazes. Some first came through the door as customers and now feel like part of the furniture. Five volunteers receive full membership in exchange for helping in the studio. Tutors, members, volunteers and the wider communities at Carrow House and Norwich Unity Hub have all helped make Mud Hub bigger than Sammy herself.

 

That was always the goal.

What running a pottery studio really looks like

One of Sammy’s sharper lessons from year one is that running a pottery studio involves much less pottery than expected.

 

She knew clay, teaching, studio operations and community-building. Then came accounts, funding, marketing, staffing, bookings, websites, social media and measuring social impact. Sammy also completed Trading For Good, a year-long programme run by the School for Social Entrepreneurs, which helped her understand the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector. She has also learned that she cannot answer every message or solve every problem alone. Sometimes having both hands covered in clay is a useful reminder that a reply can wait, or that someone else can help.

 

The people remain her biggest measure of success. She has watched people arrive unsure of themselves or carrying a lot, then slowly begin to thrive. The numbers are beginning to show it too. Mud Hub confirmed £480,000 of social impact in its first six months. The currently confirmed total is now more than £750,000, giving measurable weight to the difference Sammy sees every day.

 

An invitation to the Sheriff of Norwich’s Community Thank You dinner offered another perspective. Surrounded by organisations and businesses from across the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector, Sammy saw that Mud Hub had become part of something much bigger than one pottery studio.

What will year two make?

Sammy is proudest of a simple, hard-won fact: Mud Hub opened, and it made it through its first year.

 

The concept has proved itself. The studio is now nearing capacity, and Sammy is seeking funding for a second kiln. Sammy’s expectation is that Mud Hub’s social-impact figure could pass £1 million by September. That remains a future expectation. Today, the confirmed figure is more than £750,000.

 

For Sammy, the journey from Lucy & Yak customer, to team member, to founder supported with her first kiln has brought things full circle. The people she met here still check in. Mud Hub still carries some of what she learned here. And yes, we admire what she has made very much.

 

Happy first birthday, Mud Hub. Here’s to more people finding their hands, their people and a little breathing space in the clay.