Practise Makes Pigeons: Ben Hall

Ben Hall’s garden shed studio was the foundation of a new artwork installation, presented at the National Festival of Making in partnership with Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery.

Open throughout Summer 2026, the exhibition captured the spirit of makers and the unique spaces they create for their craft.⁠
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Down a ginnel, behind a high fence on a terraced street in Sheffield, sits a garden shed. Like many garden sheds, it’s full of tools. But in Ben’s shed, these are wheels, clay knives, loops and sponges. Surfaces are smudged with the dried residues of clay used to make the ceramics that line the high shelves.⁠

Recognisable for their scored surfaces, glazed and fired in rich blues and etched with haiku, Hall’s vessels are containers for stories, observations and small moments of everyday life.⁠

Hall’s poems celebrate the quirks, rituals and oddities that quietly shape our lives: the local pigeon, a favourite pub sign, the idiosyncratic behaviours of folk that might otherwise go by unnoticed. With warmth, humour and curiosity, he captures something of what it feels like to
be here, now.

The exhibition provided a glimpse into the place where these poems and pots begin, and the unique traces we leave behind.

Delivered in Partnership with Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery.

Practise Makes Pigeons marked Ben Hall’s first residency and solo exhibition. During the exhibition run and residency with Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery, audiences were invited to gain deeper insight into the artist’s practice through talks, music and a Sgraffito workshop.

About Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery

Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery is one of the first purpose-built museums outside of London in the UK. Open since 1874, it houses collections of fine art, social history and the Lewis Textile Collection.

Blackburn Museum is interested in presenting relevant narratives for the community it serves and creating an inclusive programme of exhibitions and events.

Website

About Ben Hall

Benjamin Hall – otherwise known as Mr Ben – is a ceramicist, painter and songwriter. After teaching himself in an old barn next to his childhood home, the unmistakable imprint of the fells and valleys of his native Westmorland became indelibly furrowed into clay, canvas and song.

Today Ben occupies a thriving pottery studio affectionately known as ‘The Melody Shed’ in the heart of Sheffield’s old engraving district. Hall’s visual work ranges from humble tableware to beguiling illustrative vases, jars and oil paintings

Website