Sunbathing? No thanks. I’d rather carve a gargoyle. Why are we craving more creativity on our vacations?

I’m sawing an enormous hunk of limestone. Unsurprisingly, it’s taking a while, and keeping the blade straight as I move it rhythmically across the stone block is giving my arms a workout. One of my classmates has already moved onto the teeth of her sculpture. She’s over-filed, and the blunt stubs look more like someone with a lifelong addiction to fizzy drinks than the ghoulish face of a gargoyle. White dust is everywhere, coating us, the half-carved gargoyle sculptures and the studio floor in thick, limestone dandruff. We stay covered in the stuff when we nip out to get Chinese for lunch in Belleville, east Paris, and then it’s back to work again.

This two-day course is one of a long line of workshops I’ve taken when I travel, that I may never revisit. I’ve tried making momos in Kathmandu, miniature painting in Udaipur, and yurt-building in Issyk Kul, Kyrgyzstan. In Burgundy, I learnt to make my own stained glass window panel, in Sri Lanka’s Gal Oya National Park, I took a cooking class using ingredients I’d never heard of and may never find again, and in Arequipa, Peru I made bean-to-bar chocolate.

So if we’re not learning skills to become a professional chef, yurt-builder or gargoyle-carver, why are we doing it?

The older I’ve become, the more I’ve sought out these kinds of experiences. Perhaps they’re easier to find, with an increasing number of tour operators and tourist boards promoting links with local artisans, and travelers, Gen Z in particular, seeking activity holidays over fly-and-flops. Or maybe it’s simply because I’ve got more disposable income now than when I was 19.

Mostly, though, I think it’s because I miss learning. From the ages of four to 22, I spent most of my waking hours in education. As adults, we may, albeit sometimes unconsciously, be learning each day, but we go for increasingly long periods of time without learning.

“Leisurely activities can reduce depression and depression risk—maybe because they include a range of active ingredients that are health-promoting.”

- Ciara McCabe, professor of neuroscience

But there’s good news. Going on holiday allegedly improves our ability to learn. A study conducted by professors and PHD students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong found that creativity is boosted when we travel, and “that merely recalling one’s tourism memory—even from a long time ago—increases creativity.”

It’s a benefit that’s been clocked by travel companies too. “In the 10 years I’ve worked here, I’ve noticed a growing trend in the number of enquiries from groups wanting to learn or develop skills as they travel, for example, adults keen to learn to cook regional specialities from the destination they’re visiting,” says Layla Tyler-Page, private travel manager at Audley Private Concierge. “Over the last few years, we’ve also seen an increased demand for touring with cultural learning experiences for children, like ninja classes in Japan or kite-making in Vietnam.”

Audley Travel isn’t alone. Research by online excursion marketplace GetYourGuide in collaboration with YouGov, saw a 126 percent increase in workshop and class bookings in 2024-25, and reported Google searches for ‘hobby holidays’ went up a staggering 9,900 percent in 12 months. Hilton’s 2026 travel report found 72 percent of those surveyed wanted to take time off work to explore a skill or hobby.

But whether we keep, much less further, the skills we’ve learnt when back on home soil is difficult to know. A lack of specialist equipment might be the big constraint—I’d have to invest in a lot of tools to make my own stained glass or carve my own gargoyle. Even cooking classes can be difficult to recreate. I loved learning to make macaroons, but not enough to invest in a KitchenAid and piping bags to spend several hours baking them alone.

So why do I do it? Personally, it’s because it feels good. And there’s science in that too. “It could be that people find learning in itself enjoyable, which improves self-esteem, and in turn, their mood,” says Ciara McCabe, Professor of Neuroscience, Psychopharmacology and Mental Health at the University of Reading.

“Leisurely activities can reduce depression and depression risk—maybe because they include a range of active ingredients that are health-promoting, like opportunities for creative expression, aesthetic pleasure and cognitive stimulation. Even short activities can improve our mood, but to have a sustained effect we likely need to do them often.”

Increasingly, artisans also rely on bookings from tourists to make a living from their trade, or to keep a dying skill alive. The demand for blacksmithing, for example, has steadily declined for centuries, but by giving classes to the public to learn to forge a knife or a hatchet, they’re kept in business.

As this report from TheTourism.Instiutute says, “When managed correctly, tourism helps artisans keep their fires burning. It validates their culture in the eyes of the world and provides the resources to keep traditions alive. It turns the artisan from a relic of the past into a vital part of the modern economy.”

In a world that seems increasingly focused on achievement, and being the best, these workshops feel like an antidote.

Making gargoyles is also an increasingly rarified skillset, but stonemason Cécilia da Mota receives 50 percent of her income from the gargoyle-carving classes she runs in Paris, with the other 50 percent coming from creating giant stone genitalia which gynecologists use for teaching. At the start of her career, the majority of her work came from historical renovations, including on the Louvre and the Théâtre du Châtelet.

“I’m passionate about what I do, which is why I love sharing my skills with my students,” says da Mota, whose recent pupils have come from all corners of the globe, from California to Casablanca. “It’s fun to talk to them about the renovation projects I’ve worked on on historical buildings, and to see their eyes shining when they create their own sculptures.”

Workshops via the French website Wecandoo, which sells over 8,000 workshops offered by 4,000 artisans across France and Francophone Belgium, have become the go-to gift among my contemporaries in France. Many of my friends will travel hours for a class, often planning a weekend trip or holiday around the activity. And while most of them never use the skill again, with one, it stuck.

“I signed up for a dive workshop in the Red Sea when I was on holiday in Egypt,” my friend Amy told me. “I just wanted to see the reefs, but I fell in love with the underwater world, and stayed to get my Open Water Certificate. It went on to be my career, leading me to professional dive work in the Great Barrier Reef, New Zealand and back home in the UK.”

Pottery and ceramics classes top their books, with cookery classes hot on their heels, something which Wecandoo’s PR Manager Mathieu Deleneuville accredits to the lower price tag and class duration. Cooking and ceramics classes still often cost under EUR€50 (USD$58) and last just a few hours.

“The activities we offer have become more and more unusual,” says Deleneuville. “You can make your own skateboard in Bordeaux and then test it out on a ramp right next to the workshop, build your own bamboo bike frame in Toulouse, or make sausages with a butcher in the Basque Country.”

My own holidays for the year increasingly resemble the frenzied calendar of an activity junkie. Stained glass was the latest, and I spent the morning filing down pieces of colored glass on a wet sanding machine which spat out water in every direction. Scoring panes using a glass cutter before breaking them into the shapes I wanted using pliers felt daunting, but in the space of just four hours, I’d created my own stained glass panel to be proud of.

“I’m so sick of sunsets,” said my teacher Patrick Ducré, so I’d opted for a mountain scene instead. Some of the panes were semi-opaque, some transparent, and others were intricate and swirled, like a photo of a planet taken through a Hubble telescope.

Next on the agenda are knife-making in Beaujolais, a cookery class in La Réunion, perhaps a mountaineering course in the French Alps—although the latter, at least, is a skill I hope I’ll continue to use. Along with the joy of learning something new, I like the absence of pressure of being a perpetual beginner. There’s no expectation for me to produce the most professional-looking knife, or the most uniform Réunionnais samoussas (triangular samosas typically filled with spicy fish and potatoes).

In a world that seems increasingly focused on achievement, and being the best, these workshops feel like an antidote. It’s an opportunity to be creative whilst letting my mind wander, and to experience the joy of making something using my hands.

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