On 7th June, City College played host to the first, sold-out meeting of the Potteries Lunar Society. The theme of the talk was sustainable futures, with the guest speakers John Robb (The Membranes), Carry Somers (Fashion Revolution) and Tom Wedgwood (Catching Light Technology) putting forward ideas from the music, green technologies and fashion industries, and discussing counter culture, sustainable futures and the regeneration of communities like Burslem. Thank you to the speakers, as well as Ian Mood, Nichola Twemlow and Annette Francis for making the evening such a success, and apologies to anyone we might have forgotten – thank you too!

The Potteries Lunar Society was set up in 2021. The original Lunar Society was formed in the late eighteenth century, and the meetings of a few fertile minds changed an age. The original Lunar Men gathered together for lively dinner conversations, the journey back from their Birmingham meeting place lit by the full moon, and included Josiah Wedgwood, Erasmus Darwin, Matthew Boulton, and James Watt, amongst others. Their debates brought together philosophy, arts, science and commerce, and as well as debating and discovering, the ‘Lunarticks’ also built canals and factories, and managed world-class businesses. It is a similar sense of discovery and debate that informs the present Lunar Society, and aims to link social, economic, scientific and cultural thinking, and catalyse action on issues critical to the common good.