Alison tells us all about the show, and we had the pleasure of asking her a few questions about her experiences both at London Packaging Week, and taking part in this fantastic show.  

BBC iPlayer – Make It at Market – Series 1: Episode 9

“My TV programme has been announced as airing in January! The series is called ‘Make it at Market’ and is hosted by Dom Chinea of the repair shop and features aspiring artists and crafters to see if they can – and want to – turn their passion into a business.  

Exciting times!!  But very scary as I will not see it before it’s on air!!”

The series started at 4:30 pm on the 2nd of January on BBC One with repeats at 7:15 am the day after – Tuesday, the 3rd of January – on BBC Two.  It will also be on iPlayer and BritBox.

Each new episode was released daily Monday to Friday between 2nd to 20th January, with repeats being aired the following weekday morning.

Alison’s episode Aired Thursday, the 12th of January at 4:30 pm on BBC one.

Q: How did people react to your work at London Packaging Week 2022? 

People really loved my work and were very complimentary about it.

Many wanted to know how I made the pieces and were intrigued by the techniques while others were interested in my story behind the pieces.  

They appreciated the link between glass as a packaging material and glass as a glass blowing art form.

One man stood mesmerised for 30 minutes and told me he was so reminded of his arctic homeland with icy mountains, icebergs, frozen waves and lava which for me is an enormous compliment!

Others simply looked with interest and said “Beautiful – absolutely beautiful!”.

It was a fantastic opportunity to showcase my work at London Packaging Week and ‘complete the circle’ as I used to own a top packaging design, development, project management and department leadership consultancy and exhibited with Easyfairs in that capacity on many occasions.

Q: Do you feel your passion for materials and packaging is relevant in today’s world of art? 

Being selected to be part of this new BBC programme “Make it at Market” is an enormous privilege.  It has been both an amazing experience and a fabulous journey – with lots of hard work and sleepless nights – but exciting to see the progress that I and other participants have made.  It’s a very collaborative programme and I am sure that I have also made some life-long friends along the way too.

I certainly feel that my passion for materials and packaging is relevant in today’s world of art.

Everything from the use of the materials and how they behave and how to handle and anneal them to my designs for packaging the glass art I create to present it well and survive the couriers!  I have also started to work with mixed materials and understanding their properties and behaviours helps to create the art.  There is always an element of play and surprise where hot glass is involved – it definitely has a will of its own which I need to work with in my art!