Spinfield Turners join Marlow arts trail with free open studios weekend

Spinfield Turners sat inside the Marlow Art Trail and Open Studios over Sunday May 24 and Monday May 25, giving visitors a free, drop-in chance to find woodturning inside a wider town-wide arts crawl. With 36 artists spread across 12 venues in Marlow, England, the trail offered a rare setting where bowls, vessels and other turned work could be seen alongside painting, pottery and sculpture rather than in a stand-alone club room.

That broad mix was the point. The trail brought woodturning into the same conversation as other handmade disciplines, and the format made it easy for casual visitors to wander in, follow the map and see what a lathe can produce without committing to a workshop or a formal demo ticket. For turners, that kind of open-studios exposure matters because it puts finished work in front of people who may have come for a painter or potter and left with a new appreciation for the range of the craft.

The Marlow Art Trail itself has grown from modest beginnings. Local artist Keith Clarke conceived it in spring 2020 as an alternative way to showcase work while galleries were closed during lockdown, and the event has since become a recurring part of the town’s arts calendar. Earlier editions were smaller, with one 2024 listing naming 26 local artists in 7 venues and a 2025 listing naming 20 artists in 5 venues. This year’s 36-artist, 12-venue spread marked a bigger footprint for the trail and a wider stage for makers such as Spinfield Turners.

The weekend also fit neatly into Buckinghamshire’s broader visual arts circuit. Bucks Art Weeks describes itself as the county’s largest visual arts event, bringing together hundreds of contemporary artists and makers, and its 2026 events page listed the Marlow trail as a free-entry route across multiple Marlow venues with leaflet and map guidance. That low-friction structure was part of the appeal: follow the yellow signs, pick up the leaflet and move from one studio stop to the next.

Spinfield Turners had already shown how woodturning can work in that setting. A 2024 Marlow Art Trail listing mentioned free woodturning and pottery demonstrations at the venue, underscoring how live turning can become part of the draw as well as the display. Malcolm Cleaver, who uses the Spinfield Turners name, has lived in Marlow since 1984, took up woodturning in 2015 after retiring from a civil engineering design consultancy, and says he turns a wide variety of items for fun, family, friends and charity. As chairman of Berkshire Woodturners Association, he also sits close to a group that welcomes new members of all abilities and works to promote interest in woodturning and related disciplines. In a weekend built around open doors and a simple map, that made Spinfield Turners hard to miss.