If you want something more from your holidays than sipping beers on the beach or taking on extreme sports challenges, then you’re not alone. Travellers have long dipped into local culture with cooking classes and tastings of wine, beer and chocolate. But, perhaps because of a DIY-mad millennials or the current vogue for worldly, fair-trade goods and fashion, there are increasing options to learn regional crafts, too.
Some courses consist of an hour or two of demonstrations by a local craftsperson – a Japanese paper maker, a North Carolina woodworker – with a chance to try your hand at their art and create your own memento. Other classes might take all day or a few days, depending on your level of interest and available vacation time. Some programmes employ refugees or people who might otherwise be living in poverty; all let you interact with locals in a deeper way than a stop at a souvenir stand.
Artistry tours are cropping up, too, leading creative-minded adventurers on longer odysseys into, say, Oaxacan weaving or Indian bamboo-bicycle making. Founded in 2015, VAWAA (Vacation With an Artist) links individuals or small groups of travellers to 69 artists in 23 countries for “mini-apprenticeships” of four to seven days.
You can pick up some woven cloth in a souvenir shop in Oaxaca, or you can learn to make your own from the locals
You cover your lodging and meals, then spend four hours or so a day cutting out leather shadow puppets in Malaysia or sewing denim jackets in a Los Angeles design studio.
And ACE Camps take groups of 10 to 16 people on retreats spanning five to 11 days and focused on, for example, batik in Swaziland or flower arranging and pottery throwing in southern Japan.
“We try to create immersive experiences with not only hands-on crafting but also cultural and culinary opportunities,” says company founder Angela Ritchie. “You’ll get to take home a handmade souvenir, but you also leave with a collection of local experiences and fresh ideas.”
Here are several places you can exercise your creativity as well as your curiosity. Booking in advance is recommended.
Visitors to Bagru, India, about 30km southwest of Jaipur, will see yards and yards of vibrantly coloured woodblock-print textiles drying in the sun in a giant communal field, as has happened for centuries in this textile hub. Studio Bagru holds one- or two-day workshops demonstrating how artisans chisel teak into intricate blocks, then painstakingly use them to stamp patterns on cotton using natural dyes (indigo, mud, vegetable). Students then stand at long wooden tables, imprinting scarves, shawls or bags with paisley, leaf or elephant patterns.
Address: 1st Floor, G7/B, Vinobha Marg, Opp. Magpie Villa, C Scheme, Ashok Nagar, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
Phone: +91-199295-10239
Cost: About US$85 for one day, about US$155 for two days. Fees include a traditional thali lunch and chai; transportation from Jaipur available for about US$25.
Print your own textiles in Rajasthan
Italian leather crafts
Founded in 1950 to teach a trade to second world war orphans, Scuola del Cuoio, a Florentine leather workshop and school, makes its home under the arches of the old dormitory of the Franciscan friars at the storied Basilica of Santa Croce. Students pop on white smocks and choose from a rainbow of richly scented hides before cutting and stitching a book cover during three-hour courses, or they sew and finish a belt over six hours. Want to be the next Salvatore Ferragamo? You can also buckle down at an intensive 10-week course covering bag-making basics.
Address: Via San Giuseppe, 5R, Florence
Phone: 011-39-055-244-533
Costs: Book-cover-making about US$160 to US$270; belt-making about US$308 to US$470
Lao weaving and dyeing
Ock Pop Tokis a fibre-arts centre that employs weavers and dyers from nearby villages who teach batik, basket making, silk weaving and other traditional crafts, including some aimed at kids. Courses run from half a day (dyeing a cotton napkin) to three days (weaving an ikat scarf). An on-site cafe serves spicy East-meets-West food, and the textile-filled, five-room Mekong Villa offers lodgings.
Fifteen minutes outside central Marrakesh, Beldi Country Club, a Kasbah-style hotel and garden complex, has small glass-blowing and pottery-making workshops spinning out the region’s trademark candy-hued tagines and teacups. In the pottery shop, kids and adults get messy turning clay pots, cups or bowls on the wheel, which the staff will then glaze and fire.
Address: Kilometer 6, Route de Barrage, Cherifia, Marrakesh, Morocco
Phone: +212-5-24-38-39-50
Cost: About US$20 for adults, about US$10 for children
Appalachian mountain crafts
John C. Campbell Folk School, a school and arts space, in a bucolic setting in the US, about a two-hour drive from Chattanooga, Tennessee, or Asheville, North Carolina, opened in 1925 to preserve Appalachian folk crafts. More than 860 week-long or weekend classes in subjects as varied as “Sweetgrass Baskets” and “Forging an Axe” are taught by acclaimed craftspeople. Students can also book cozy on-site lodgings and wholesome meals.
Address: One Folk School Road, Brasstown, North Carolina, USA
Phone: +828-837-2775
Cost: Rates run from US$354 to US$898
Many useful home decorations can be made from macrame
Macrame and more
Students can learn how to do macrame and other West Coast-cool crafts at Makers Mess, which holds classes in a slick Silver Lake storefront. Participants scoot a brightly hued Eames chair up to a long wooden table for hands-on instruction in producing marbled clay coasters, felted pet portraits, leather sandals and, yes, macrame. Classes last two to five hours.
Address: 602 N. Hoover St., Los Angeles, USA
Phone: +213-448-4002
Cost: From US$46 to US$230 (for more complex crafts, such as making leather sandals)
In a bright, industrial-chic workshop at Corning Museum of Glass, New York state museum, you can try glass blowing, etching and fusing. Slip on safety goggles for highly supervised 20- to 40-minute classes at one of the world’s largest showplaces for glass, where students turn out a pendant, a picture frame or even a wine glass.
Address: One Museum Way, Corning, NY, USA
Phone: +800-732-6845
Cost: Typically US$13 to US$32
It takes a lot of skill to blow glass like a pro, but you could make a start on your next trip
South African wire beading
Streetwires Artist Collectiveis a19-year-old nonprofit workshop and boutique set amid the coffee shops and galleries of Cape Town’s buzzing Woodstock neighborhood employs disadvantaged artisans who use colourful beads and wire to string and shape life-size lion busts, holiday ornaments shaped like the African continent, and mini soccer cleats. Ninety-minute classes help children and adults construct keychains, bracelets or small bowls.
Address: 354 Albert Rd., Cape Town, South Africa
Phone: +27-21-426-2475
Cost: About US$20; book in advance for weekday-only sessions
Stroll older Buenos Aires neighbourhoods such as San Telmo and La Boca and you’ll spot business signs and the occasional vintage bus festooned with swirling calligraphy letters, carnival-esque colours and elaborate scrollwork. That’s fileteado, a homegrown painting style started by 19th-century Italian immigrants and continued by artists such as Alfredo Genovese, who teaches frequent two-hour group classes at his Fileteado Porteño Workshop. Participants craft a small decorated plaque.
Address: Admiral FJ Segui 1465, Buenos Aires
Phone: +54-11-4581-0798
Cost: About US$110
This style of artwork originated in wagon factories in Buenos Aires at the turn of the 20th century.
English silversmithing
On The Silver Jewellery Boat, a 60-foot longboat parked in England’s scenic Worcestershire Canals (about 45 minutes from Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare), silversmith Jonathan Kettle teaches small groups day-long courses as on making rings, crosses and bracelets. Participants also get cake, tea and, in cooler months, a chance to cozy up by the tiny wood stove on board.
No fixed address
Phone: +44-07845-826415
Cost: About US$110
This article was curated by Young Post. Better Life is the ultimate resource for enhancing your personal and professional life.
