The state’s sole brick manufacturer has been using its clay for purposes other than bricks.
After 80 years of manufacturing bricks for countless homes across Western Australia, Midland Brick is building a different kind of relationship with communities across the state.
Midland Brick raw material manager Nathan Blackwell is leading these moves by the WA company, which has been owned by BGC Australia since 2021.
A geologist who began at the Midland Brick factory in 2002, Mr Blackwell’s role has evolved to include a focus on the arts, culture and the community.
Most recently, he steered the manufacturer’s involvement in an arts festival in the small Wheatbelt town of Goomalling.
Midland Brick employees spent more than 250 hours helping with the Biosphere Boodja Arts and Wild Things Festival in September.
Mr Blackwell was instrumental in the creation of 1,000 bags of pottery clay to donate to the festival and to fundraise for a future Goomalling ceramic artist residency program.
A further tonne of bricks was donated to artists in the festival’s sister event, called Wedge 2025: The Australian Ceramics Triennale.
During the past few years, Midland Brick has donated 20t of clay for community mud play events and hundreds of tonnes for baseball and softball pitches.
The company has supported four seasons of the Midland basketball competition run by Aboriginal-led sports association Binar Futures. Almost 1,000 young people have been involved during that time.
Relationships
As Mr Blackwell tells it, though, his KPI when gauging the success of Midland Brick’s community outreach would be measured by “cups of tea”.
It’s a saying he learned in his role as chair of the brickmaker’s Reconciliation Action Plan.
“We’re trying to have real engagement in the communities we work with,” Mr Blackwell told Business News.
“We’re not a huge company that can donate millions of dollars.
“Our focus is building that relationship and working to do things together, much more like a partnership than a sponsorship.”
Midland Brick’s participation in the Biosphere Boodja festival and subsequent Ceramic Artist-in-Residence program is an example of his philosophy in community work.
It sprouted from a conversation with the festival’s creative director, ceramicist Fleur Schell, and Ballardong Aboriginal Corporation chair Tracey de Grussa.
The trio decided to make pottery clay from the Goomalling area, initially just to supply to artists.
But Mr Blackwell took the idea one step further when he suggested offering the community a full day of clay making.
The result was thousands of people working together to make clay animals to display in a landscape.
The community came together to make clay animals at the Biosphere Boodja Arts and Wild Things Festival. Photo: Biosphere Boodja Arts and Wild Things Festival
“There was an incredible energy throughout the day of people making and creating, so it was fairly organic in the way it developed, and it turned out better than you would imagine,” Mr Blackwell said.
“I had whole families working around a table, from little kids to grandparents, all making [clay animals] simultaneously.”
More than offsets
The clay also attracted interest from artists who wanted to know if it was for sale.
“I started talking to Fleur about it, and I said, ‘Well, if we’re going to do sell it, I’d like to do it as a legacy piece, as an ongoing part of this Biosphere Boodja project’,” Mr Blackwell said.
“We’re interested in promoting ceramic arts, interested in supporting local communities.
“So it was Fleur who suggested we do a residency.”
Midland Brick has begun dual naming its clay. Photo: Michael O'Brien
The resident artist will spend one day a week for one semester at Goomalling Primary and Sacred Heart Catholic schools, where funding for arts education is limited.
“We’re going to see how the first year goes,” Mr Blackwell said.
“But if it’s successful, I’d like to keep it as that legacy piece of supporting that community.”
Alongside the residency, a new annual exhibition is in the works for Goomalling, which will put children’s artwork on display within crop circles.
The company has been focusing its community efforts on the areas it impacts through clay pits or transport routes, especially in Toodyay, Goomalling, Chittering and Midland.
This winter, Midland Brick will plant its first trees to offset its environmental impact.
It has recently worked to secure two areas of land of up to 130 hectares for conservation.
“I spend more time now thinking about cockatoos and trees than clay,” Mr Blackwell said.
He is also aiming to use the land as an on-country learning opportunity for local communities.
Back to the start
Midland Brick’s interest in the arts and community has come full circle, starting with an accidental artist residency.
Local ceramic artist Warrick Palmateer had called the brickmaker to ask if he could use its large kilns for his pieces.
There was little indication at the time that Midland Brick’s affirmative response would become a year-long residency.
“We ended up doing a big field trip and visiting the quarries and collecting all different samples,” Mr Blackwell said.
“He [Mr Palmateer] used our cream mix for his works, but then he took individual clays, unblended, and used them [during various stages of his ceramics process].
“A lot of those were created from individual clay types he hand selected from our quarries.”
He said Mr Palmanteer’s work had attracted interest across the business.
“His work is very textural, with high variability in colour, with impressions of the ocean,” Mr Blackwell said.
“Everyone got to know him right throughout the business, so I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we started using various textures and colours.
“His influence was obvious, in hindsight.”
It sparked Mr Blackwell’s own ceramics journey, and he has since bought a kiln for his backyard.
