RCA Well-Making Café at London Craft Week 2025

The Well-Making Café will be a place to craft and connect, celebrating the diversity of backgrounds and concerns of RCA Applied Art students and inviting visitors to take part in craft-making as a way to improve mental health and wellbeing.

Well-Making is applied and engaged research that involves working collaboratively and creatively with partners, participants, and community groups*. It encourages reflection and close attention to the processes, places, people, and materials involved in collective making.

The 2023 Creative Health Review, published by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing and the National Centre for Creative Health, characterises creative health as employing creative methods and activities to enhance health and well-being. Creative health contributes to illness prevention, promotes healthy habits, supports the management of chronic conditions, and aids in treatment and recovery throughout life.

The Well-Making Café activities are being organised by staff and students from the Applied Arts department at the Royal College of Art. This encompasses students and staff from MA Jewellery & Metal and MA Ceramics & Glass.

**Hackney, F., Rana, M., Gant, N., & Hill, K., (2022) Guest Editorial In. Well-Making and Making-Well: Craft, Design and Everyday Creativity for Health and Well-Being. Special issue for the Journal of Applied Arts and Health. Intellect, p. 283 – 290

Drop-In Workshops

Rope making with plants

Led by Anna Matthew

Monument to the Future that Never Was

What dreams of yours are now impossible due to climate change? Let’s connect and create a monument together for the future that never was.

Led by ​​Evguenia Ignatenko

Make and share: Mexican molcajete pinch bowl workshop

Drop in session to learn how to make your own molcajete from clay, a traditional mexican mortar used to make salsas and grind spices. This is an opportunity to explore how the physical act of touching a material, clay in this case, can make us feel good.

(The pieces made will not be fired but can be taken home if you wish).

Led by Mar Villegas

Incense making with natural materials

Details TBC

Bookable Workshops (Book by emailing [email protected])

Listening through clay workshop

An opportunity to shape and play with clay in response to a range of readings and spoken word performances by RCA students. We will be focusing on the song of language and responding to the gestures and imprints left in the clay by each other.

Led by Annabelle Hall

The Wonders of Mandala Weaving

Through the rhythmic process of weaving, allow your mind to find calm and to unwind.

Drawing inspiration from the decorative ceiling patterns found in the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, China, you will be shown how to use weaving techniques and how to make your own mandala pendant.

90 minute craft session / sign-up

Led by Xue Yang