Making Coasters with Boiler House

In this blog about our current project The Repair Centre, Laura Weaver, Assistant Manager at Boiler House, talks us through the workshop she led with the group.

To start the day, the group had a tour of Boiler House, a community workshop and creative space located in Manchester's Moss Side. We also shared a talk about what takes place here, including some of the workshops that they could potentially get involved with in the future.

We then made a set of round, wooden coasters. These were sanded down to create a nice even and smooth texture. It took a fair bit of sanding to get to this point - some members of the group gave it a light sand as they liked the mottled texture on the surface, whilst others wanted a really smooth finish.

Once the coasters were sanded, we treated them with oil. This was everyone’s favourite part as it brought out the grain, textures, and colours in the wood. This created a connection and appreciation of the material. There was an option to decorate the coasters with acrylic pens, some of the group left their coasters in the natural state and others added some colour, text or drawings.

Everyone really engaged with the activity, and some members took home more materials to continue working on at home, which was great to see!

Thank you to our partners at Boiler House for this session.

Join us on Tuesday 31 May and Wednesday 1 June for a special pop up display of work created by our participants, at Manchester Craft and Design Centre.