NCECA’s 60th conference, Volumes, takes place in Detroit, Michigan, March 25 - 28, 2026

Volumes, the 60th conference of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), explores material-driven experimentation and conceptual frameworks that animate art created through clay. The essential energy of voices and sounds of the Detroit region catalyzes this conference’s theme. 

Like the subterranean networks that connect trees in a forest, the meanings of words have roots that we can connect through etymology. Some of the earliest known artifacts containing writing were produced on scrolling spirals of papyrus that ancient Roman historians called volumen. The same underlying spiraling structure abides within pots, figures, and other forms fashioned from clay coils since ancient times. Today, neural networks carrying and harvesting volumes of information are generating Artificial Intelligence that will change how we learn, work, and create.

The meaning of volumes most integrally embodied in the 2026 conference theme lies within unseeable spaces of our clay works and the firing chambers that transform them. Volumes are forces that give power and shape to the world we experience. Detroit is a place that embodies this sense of interior energy. A real and metaphorical foundry of creative ambition and craftsmanship shaped by waves of migration, industry, and resilience, Detroit has volumes to teach us. 

Teaching, learning, and creation through clay involve continual engagement with volumes as action and analysis. Volumes give form to our cultural identities, continuity, and change in a time of environmental crisis. Centered on ceramic art, this 60th NCECA conference will expand access and deepen understanding of ceramic art. Creators of culture, educators, and students involved in pottery, sculpture, design and installation, and performance will be its engines.