About Urban Crafts Club
Discover all
you can
make.
Urban Crafts Club is a platform for discovering local studios, crafts and hands-on creative experiences.
We want to make it easier for more people to step away from the screen, work with their hands and discover the people and places keeping craft alive in our cities.
Why we exist
Our days have become increasingly digital. Work, communication, entertainment and even much of our social life happen through a screen.
Making something by hand offers something different: attention, material, movement and the simple satisfaction of seeing something take shape.
Urban Crafts Club exists to make those experiences easier to find.
Less screen.
More making.
One city.
Many ways to make.
For people
Discover pottery, woodworking, textiles, glass, jewellery, painting and other hands-on experiences taking place in independent studios around your city.
For studios
Reach more people through Urban Crafts Club, keep your studio information up to date and take part in new opportunities as the platform grows.
Joining is free and there is no commission on bookings made directly with the studio.
For companies
We are developing Urban Crafts Club as a new way for companies to give employees access to local creative activities as part of their wellbeing benefits.
Instead of another generic wellbeing offer, employees can discover real places, materials and experiences happening in their city.
What we're building
Wellbeing is more
than the gym.
Sport and physical activity have an important place in employee wellbeing. But they are not the only way people disconnect, recharge and feel a sense of accomplishment.
For some people, that feeling comes from working with clay, learning to sew, carving wood, printing, painting, working with glass or simply making something with their own hands.
Urban Crafts Club is building a Corporate Wellbeing programme that gives employees access to local creative activities as part of their wellbeing benefits.
Companies provide access. Employees choose what interests them. Local studios provide the experience.
It is a different way to reconnect with creativity, curiosity and the maker spirit that exists in all of us.
Why I started Urban Crafts Club
I grew up around people
who made things.
I grew up in a village of 500 people in Bavaria.
My grandfather still had a small farm. There were animals, tractors, barns and tools for everything.
When he needed a willow basket, he didn't buy one. He wove one.
When we wanted to raise rabbits as children, he built us a rabbit hutch.
And when our dog Anka arrived, he made her first dog house from an old wooden barrel.
Even today, the family home has almost every kind of tool you can imagine: saws, planes, woodworking tools and welding equipment. Making, fixing and building things is simply part of everyday life there.
I haven't lived there for many years…
Most of my professional life has taken place in a very different world: marketing, brands, events, strategy and new business models.
I've been fortunate to manage projects ranging from Tony Hawk riding a MegaRamp on Barceloneta beach in front of 25,000 people, Travis Rice's movie premiere on Madrid's Plaza del Callao with Quiksilver, to the Barcelona and Paris Marathons with ASICS - and today, building new solutions, business models and ecosystems for clients at The MotherTrees and The Venue Barcelona.
I love much of that work.
But none of it has ever quite matched the satisfaction of making a real physical object with your own hands.
There is something very simple and very powerful about starting with a material, learning how it behaves, struggling with it a little, and eventually being able to look at something and say:
I made that.
I have the feeling that, in an increasingly fast and digital world, more and more people are looking for that feeling again.
Urban Crafts Club grew from that idea.
We want to bring together people who are curious about crafts and the studios where those skills are already being taught.
A place to explore what is happening nearby, discover new crafts, take part and eventually become part of local creative communities.
And we want to give companies a way to offer their employees something meaningful alongside more traditional wellbeing benefits: the opportunity to reconnect with creativity, the maker spirit and that deeply human sense of accomplishment that comes from creating something yourself.
Daniel Dümig
Founder, Urban Crafts Club
The places
already exist.
Across our cities, independent studios are already teaching people how to throw clay, carve wood, sew, draw, print, weave, work with glass and make things with their hands.
Urban Crafts Club doesn't create those experiences.
We help more people discover them.