Ontario pottery studio turns to OnlyFans to stay afloat

Arts institutions in Ontario and beyond have increasingly been buckling under the strain of diminishing funding, rising costs and dwindling participation in recent years, pushing one pottery studio into an unorthodox approach to staying afloat.

Though the validity of this assumption is contested, many associate OnlyFans with desperation. The website, which allows creators of all kinds to host paid content subscriptions, has become synonymous with adult content, thanks to its lax guidelines about the types of content that users can pay for.

And, though it's not always the case, there's still a pervasive stigma that sex workers enter the industry as a last resort, when all other viable options for work have been exhausted.

Richmond Hill's Hill Potters' Guild, a non-profit arts co-op that's been around since 1978, took keen note of the salacious stigmas surrounding the platform and decided to use them to their own benefit, launching their own OnlyFans account to encourage a new generation to pick up the craft.

 

 

 

 

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In collaboration with local creative consultancy Black Jet Inc., the Potters' Guild created a nine-part video series called "Ceramics are Sexy," poking fun at the sensual association that pottery has come to be associated with. I suppose we have Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore to thank for that.

Unlikely though the pair — a nearly 50-year-old potter's guild and OnlyFans-dot-com — may be, it's kind of a match made in heaven.

The titillating video series features easy-on-the-eyes potters providing actually useful, albeit euphemistic, pottery advice: instructing viewers to "grip the base," and "remember, a firm grip makes all the difference." Not that I watched them or anything.

Perhaps best of all, they're free to watch — but you will have to make an account on the site. If that's not your speed, you can, instead, opt to get your own hands dirty with a class or membership at the Hill Potters' Guild. It's probably the safer-for-work option.