Dr Natasha Mayo is a practitioner, researcher, HEA fellow, member of the Royal Anthropology Institute, the Folklore Society and trained in Oral History techniques.

Her practice is fuelled by an interest in approaches that move between social, technical and creative ways of working. Teaching within an interdisciplinary framework she calls on drawing, relational aesthetics and sensory anthropology, alongside more traditional approaches to clay – to test the boundaries and preconceptions of the discipline and to identify more holistic, generative approaches to creativity.

Her drawing research has been much influenced by her role as a mother of three, including the devising of: The Social Potentials of Drawing finding parallels between the mechanisms of play and the activity of drawing, funded by Valley & Vale Community Arts, Drawing Parental Conversations: an international year-long project involving forty parent/artists across eight countries using drawing to create space and time to strengthen intergenerational relationships, funded by Artworks Cymru and presented at the Thinking Through John Berger conference. This led to the 'Drawing Partnerships' collaboration with Chris Glynn and a subsequent event at the V&A as part of the HEA annual conference. During Covid'19 she collaborated with violinist Bethan Frieze to capture new rituals of practice in children drawing in response to key events in their lives in: Sounding lines which has led to an archive of intergenerational drawings/indexical mark-making reflective of each member of her family, a ongoing project.

She co-devised the Drawing In-between: Interdisciplinary Learning through Drawing exhibition and conference alongside Chris Glynn and Andre Stitt, funded by HEA, and the Drawing Inspirations symposium and associated catalogue with Alex McErlain, funded by the Makers Guild, Wales. Most recently her drawing research has involved: Drawing Small Stories From the Lake at the MAA/Ground Residency: a means of capturing deep stories held within conversational structures, presented as part of the Thinking Through Drawing symposium (TtD).

Her relational practice has moved from more events-based practice to identifying the role of creativity within a home / society / culture including the devising of: Beyond Borders: Mapping the Movement of Man and the Movement of Land, an interdisciplinary collaboration acoss archeology, dance, drawing, storytelling, music and clay supported by the Welsh Refugee Council, National Museum Wales and the Big Draw, and associated Flux: Art, Society and Responsibility symposium and the Observing Participatory Practice Framework, funded by Artworks Cymru. 

The Music, Making and Dance of Cob, explores skills as ethnographic record connecting people to time and place, at the Greenman Festival of Music and Art, funded by HEA. More recently 'Irreducible Forces of Home: Ensemble Practices of Artist/Parents During COVID’19' celebrated how creativity is called upon at times of ambiguity and change on behalf of the Royal Anthropological Institute and Folklore Society.

Her contribution to the wider field of ceramics has included co-devising the Zelli Porcelain Prize, the Fragmented Figure conference and exhibition together with Michael Hose, Dr. Jeffery Jones and Dr. Babette Martini, and designing the associated website and all resources within it, funded by the British Arts Council. She was reviews editor for the Interpreting Ceramics Journal from 2003 to 2016, edited the 'Ceramics in Society' journal in 2004 and contributed over 40 reviews/articles to Interpreting Ceramics, Ceramic Review, Ceramics: Art and Perception, Kerameiki Techni, AN, CCQ. 

She designed a comprehensive Ceramics VLE funded by Gwella that, in collaboration with Ingrid Murphy and Caroline Taylor, built an online community of shared practice in ceramics. As part of this, she designed resources in support of each area of core teaching that included: Creative Strategies - now adapted to underpin theory delivery for the Masters in Contemporary Craft at Hereford College of Art, ‘Beyond Eight Propositions: Drawing Resource’ and Bridging the Divide: In Conversation Between Practice and Theory, each funded by the Higher Education Academy. These resources were recognised at multiple international conferences including the Society of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Toronto, E-Learning SCAD, Savanna College of Art and Design, NCECA, Florida, and the Learning & Teaching Conference, University of Galway.

She devised the The 'Beyond Borders' Exhibition, Seattle, USA, part of the NCECA conference in 2012 supported by Wales Arts International, the Interpreting Ceramic Objects interdisciplinary project, funded by the National Museum Wales as part of their 'Fragile?' exhibition, and co-curated The Sensorial Object exhibition and a schedule of associated multi-sensory events, funded by the Makers Guild, Wales.

Her contribution to skills teaching in ceramics is widely acknowledged: Vicarious Skills Share events have been hosted by CAID and CoCA, and led to the Global Studio during the pandemic, in collaboration with institutions in Iceland, Turkey, Limerick and Sweden. More locally, her research into the wider language of clay's techniques and processes led to the devising of a series of Crafts Council Hey Clay events including: #CSADStompingtheCob at the Greenman Festival of Music and Art, The St Fagans Artefact, Poetry and Clay and the Broken Sonnet in collaboration with poet Dr Christina Thatcher and The Great Welsh Throwdown Challenge.

She convened the Ceramics Communities conference to celebrate Cardiff's international role in building creative networks of practice as part of CoCA’s Re-stating Clay Symposia bringing together Haptic/Tacit, Clay Commons, Whitegold and Brick Field amongst others. Her Crafting Stories: Small Talk research more specifically maps her own pedagogic approach to the sociality of clay, presented as part of 'The International Education Studies Association' (TIESA) and soon to be published in 'Crafting Stories: Small Talk in Ontological Disruptions: Exploring the Ontological Turn in Education, ed. Dylan Adams, for Routledge.

More recently, the Flightlines Oral Histories Podcast was established with Dr CJ O’Neill, to collect narratives surrounding lives lived with clay. The project was used to reveal stories beneath the artefacts exhibited in CoCA's 'Wall of Women', to encourage intergenerational support between women practicing in the field and widen visitor accessibility to discourse within the collection. The publication ‘Conversation Writing: Small Stories Arising Between Spoken Word and Text’ explores ways to maintain the materiality of speech in written form through adaptation of oral history techniques and close correspondence between academic and artist. This was extended through partnership with museum curator Dr. Helen Walsh in a paper entitled: ‘Occupational Folklore: Archiving Embodied Encounters’ identifying 'small stories' contained within the letters written between Bill Ismay and Michael Cardew.

‘Occupational Folklore: Narratives Woven Between Word, Gesture and Clay' devised together with Sam Lucas and Kim Norton now gives specific focus to the very moments at which stories start to arise through our interaction with clay. The method of using clay and voice to collect a living archive of occupational tales; exploring artists wider ecology of creative practice, is now underway through conversations with this year's BCB AWARD artists. 

Her current project ‘the unfolding of a pictorial rhythm’ in collaboration with Dr Anna Falcini, seeks to identify interdisciplinary, transferable models of archival research in response to the Gwen John epistolary archive at the National Library, Wales, to coincide with the 'Gwen John: Strange Beauties' exhibition at the National Museum Wales 2026. Artists will be bought into practical conversation with each other over the course of six months to define new methods of interpretation.

Natasha's practice-led PhD examined how thought can be channelled and reveal itself through gestures, pose, and the body blushing, shivering and stretching, a focus that has developed surface properties to convey a sense of knowledge as it travels through the body. A practical engagement in the studio, that echoes her ongoing interest with the practice of ‘in conversation’ and small talk evident in recent drawing, social practice and writing.

She has received national and international acclaim for her ceramic practice, with work in private collections in the USA, Korea, Japan, Belgium, France and most recently selected as part of the renowned ceramics archive at the International Ceramics Studio, Hungary (ICS) funded by Wales Arts International and the International Ceramics Festival.