I’d been active creatively for many years but a big change happened around 2013, when I moved to Stoke on Trent and started studying ceramics – it is a small, post-industrial city in the Midlands. It has an incredible history in ceramic production and a dedicated Ceramic Museum in the city centre. At the time, it was listed as an arts ‘blackspot’ in the United Kingdom and it was assigned a wedge of arts funding for regeneration, which meant it was more or less free to take a course in ceramics, studio space was cheaper than my phone bill, and then after that, it was possible to get everything you needed free from old factories: clay, tools and even kilns. I’ve always just worked with whatever I could get access to, so that really affected the direction of my work.