Remaking England's Homes—And the Art World

Until recently, 35 Cairns Street was just another boarded-up house, one in a row of abandoned, two-up, two-down Victorian terraces in a rundown part of Liverpool, in northwest England. Soon it will be a home again, part of a tranche of affordable housing sold or rented out by a local charity. But since January 2015 it has been home to Granby Workshop, a profit-making community enterprise that makes and sells ceramics, furniture and textiles.

In the large downstairs room, at a table densely covered with arrays of handcrafted objects, Jade Crompton, a 20-something graduate of Liverpool Hope University and full-time employee at the workshop, is collaging pieces of ceramic decal paper onto plain white tiles—ready to be fired in the kiln that sits in the far corner. She is fulfilling an order from the shop at Tate Modern, the huge gallery that sits on the banks of the Thames in London, more than 200 miles south.