An open call has been issued for artists looking to work alongside Blackburn and Darwen artisans as part of the popular Festival of Making.

Darwen Terracotta has taken part in several residencies for the festival's Art in Manufacturing strand, the most recent of which saw Nehal Aamir create standout tilework during her posting with the Challenge Way outfit.

Her artworks were later exhibited at Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery as part of their 150th anniversary celebrations.

An Art in Manufacturing spokesman said: "Darwen Terracotta has been resident to three Art in Manufacturing residencies since the commissioning programme began. ⁠

"While past outcomes have always been based in ceramics, for this residency there is no expectation that the artist must have a ceramics-based practice, or that the material outcome must be terracotta based. ⁠

⁠"We’d like to hear from artists and makers with a practice which may reflect an interest in making in a heritage context - craftsmanship and traditional making, an interest in the future of making, advanced technologies and new digital works and artists/makers who are interested in engaging with unique, often industrial processes, products and making methods."

The commission would also suit artists who make work in the public realm, say promoters, or work that engages audiences within a festival setting.

The deadine for applications, which can be made online, is Monday, November 25. at 10am.

⁠Emerging artist Nehal Aamir, who specialises in the storytelling of rituals and realities of contemporary life through creating intricate, hand-painted tiles, took part in the 2024 residency.

And in 2020 the firm hosted another Manchester-based creator, Hannah Leighton Boyce, who learned about techniques in the casting workshop and plaster shop before delivering her take on their process.

Her speciality was in 'emphasising material, bodily and spatial concerns, both in the process and labour of production, and in the viewing experience of the finished artwork' through raw and manufactured materials and found objects.

And in 2017 James Bloomfield's celebration of the Darwen Terracotta workforce saw him fashion a series of brightly-coloured columns which welcomed festival visitors in Cathedral Square.

His effort, entitled 'Of Heart and Hand', involved 32 makers working to build the two-metre high edifices, using a 1,200 degree furnace and hundreds of litres of plaster.

The firm was established in 2015 when Architectural Terracotta, formerly known as Shaws of Darwen, made a number of crafts experts redundant. The company now works internationally on commissions and projects.