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What is different about our tours?
Tourists pause to glance, and move on…
Participants on crafting tours pause, engage, connect, understand, respect and hold the country forever in heart and mind.
We pull back the curtains of the tourist ’window-front’, go behind the scenes and get involved with the locals!
Small groups - maximum of 12.
Craft tours explore the country through a practical hands-on approach - or a cultural anthropological approach. We look at the resources in the environment and how the culture has responded to them in meeting needs.
In so doing, participants engage with many historical and current crafts, with local artisans, next to local artisans - sometimes in their back-yard workshops!
Along with providing deep cultural insights, these experiences also provide opportunities to connect with locals and experience some of their world.
All this while sight-seeing the iconic places, sampling the good wine and having fun trying new experiences.
Do I need to
be crafty?
Absolutely not!
We engage and experience a country through its crafts because this provides:
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Rich insights into the environment of the place , and explains how the inhabitants have harnessed aspects of this to enhance their every day life.
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Opportunities to appreciate problem-solving: ‘I need a vessel to carry multiple items, while keeping the weight minimal… what is in my environment that I can use?’
Alongside the cultural anthropological aspect, the workshops also provide unique opportunities to engage with locals. As connections are formed, an appreciation and respect of different cultures develops. Many participants rate this aspect of our ‘craft-workshop’ visiting to be the most rich and valued.
"Highlights of the tour are definitely the workshops. They are the essence of the trip and there are many of them. Well run, fabulous variety. I especially liked the connections made working beside the local people during the workshops. These workshops make the trip different from any other on offer."
- Kerrie Huxham, 2023.
So, in a nut-shell, the reason that we engage with local crafts of the countries that we visit, is to gain the deepest possible appreciation of the physical environment and the culture as it developed and continues to progress.
More about this travelling experience...
A junction in a medieval trading route
A Medieval town of artisans and guilds
Intangible Cultural Heritage listed - UNESCO
This is the setting of Crafting Slovenia’s tour!