About

In The Making (ITM) makes things in order to make things happen: process, the sensing body, and connection are at the core of our work.

ITM is invested in material-led making, which pulls us away from a capitalist model and fosters a reciprocal relationship with the natural world.

ITM are proud members of MAKE Southwest’s Green Makers Initiative.

Past projects include:

  • Community-designed and community-installed mosaic in Stoke’s Blockhouse Park

  • Intuitive Sculpting Workshops in schools, colleges, community centres, and galleries

  • ‘Things Fall Apart’ - a group exhibition in collaboration with zero-waste shop and cafe, Almanac Cafe

Tressa Thomas

Tressa is a paper pulp artist and creative educator. Her practice seeks to embed itself into the natural and inevitable deterioration of waste materials, investing in self-recycling processes to both divert waste and cultivate agency in the face of our ecological crisis.

Tressa's making and teaching ethos relies on the belief that one of our greatest tasks as creatives is to learn to recenter the body. Her practice is rooted in material-led and body-led making, asking participants and viewers to understand material, space, and body as equal partners within the creative process.

Tressa holds an MA in Creative Education from AUP and works as a facilitator and educator at Devon and Cornwall Refugee Support, Black Mountains College and AUP.Arts University Plymouth.

Maia Walton

Maia Walton is an artist whose sculptural practice is led by the sensuous materiality of clay and a desire to create visual expressions of non-visible, sensory connections and imaginings. She approaches making as an act of care, cultivating a haptic relationship between her body and the material.

Recent works explore the aesthetic of ruin and artefact, structures that evoke a sense of history and memory, preserving traces of human presence even in their perceived abandonment. Ruins possess a unique capacity to conjure both intimacy and distance, offering fragmented glimpses of imagined human experience. Maia seeks to embody this tension through her work, with sculptures capturing the physical imprints of their creation while inviting viewers to sense the lingering warmth of what has been left behind.

Maia holds an MA in Ceramics from Arts University Plymouth.