Why I Always Look for Local Workshops When Travelling
“Sometimes the most interesting places are the ones where people are simply getting on with their work.”
Why Local Workshops?
Whenever I arrive somewhere new, people often recommend the same places. A beautiful beach, a famous viewpoint or a restaurant serving local specialities. While those places certainly have their value, I usually find myself looking somewhere else.
More often than not, I end up inside a local workshop.
It has become one of the most consistent parts of the way I travel. Long before I know where I will eat that evening, I have often already asked whether there is a local weaver, potter or artisan nearby. Not because I am searching for hidden places, but because I am curious about how things are made.
That curiosity has been with me for as long as I can remember.
As a child, I was already fascinated by how objects came into existence. Later, while studying fashion and eventually starting JANBOELO, that curiosity became more focused. I wanted to understand where fabrics came from, how leather was produced and what happened before a finished garment reached the studio.
Travelling simply expanded that curiosity.
Instead of only visiting textile manufacturers, I began finding myself inside local workshops such as pottery workshops, weaving studios and small market stalls where people quietly continued practising their craft. Different countries introduced different materials, but the same questions always seemed to return.
Who made this?
How was it made?
And what can the making tell me that the finished object never could?
Looking Beyond the Finished Object
When you first enter a local workshop, it is tempting to look at the finished products. Your eyes naturally move towards colourful fabrics, neatly stacked ceramics or carefully displayed objects waiting to be sold. They are often the first things visitors notice, and understandably so.
Yet I have learned that the most interesting part of a workshop rarely stands on the shelves. It is the process unfolding somewhere in the background.
A weaver quietly preparing threads before the first piece of cloth appears. A potter shaping clay with movements repeated thousands of times before. A craftsman carefully cutting a sandal from an old tyre using nothing more than simple hand tools and years of experience.
Those moments disappear once the object leaves the workshop.
The finished product remains, but the conversations, decisions and small corrections that brought it into existence quietly fade away. For me, that invisible part has become just as valuable as the object itself.
Perhaps even more valuable.
Because once you understand how something is made, it becomes difficult to see it as just another souvenir.
Learning Through Conversations
One of the things I enjoy most about visiting workshops is that every visit begins with a conversation. Sometimes those conversations are easy.
Sometimes they happen through gestures, drawings and shared curiosity rather than language. Yet they almost always lead somewhere unexpected.
As a fashion designer, I understand pattern making, construction and proportions. The makers I meet understand their own materials in ways I never will. Somewhere between those two perspectives, ideas begin to move back and forth.
Those moments have taught me that learning does not always require mastering another craft. Simply asking questions already changes the way you see.
The more workshops I visit, the more I realise that craftsmanship is not only preserved through making. It is also preserved through the willingness to explain, demonstrate and share knowledge with someone who arrives knowing almost nothing.
Perhaps that generosity is one of the most remarkable parts of craftsmanship.
Knowledge that has taken decades to build is often shared with complete openness.
Three Workshops That Changed the Way I Look
Some workshops stay with you long after you leave. Not because of the objects you bought, but because of the conversations that took place inside them.
A small pottery workshop on Saparua Island showed me how rhythm quietly becomes part of making. Watching clay transform beneath experienced hands revealed that repetition is not the opposite of creativity. It is often where craftsmanship begins.
A weaving workshop in Jinja, Uganda taught me that time remains visible inside cloth. Every woven piece carried the quiet rhythm of countless movements that had slowly built the fabric, one thread at a time.
And inside a local market in Masindi, I watched old tyres become sandals used across East Africa. That afternoon changed the way I looked at materials, showing me that value often begins with recognising possibilities where others only see waste.
Each workshop was completely different. Yet they all quietly asked the same question.
What happens when we begin looking beyond the finished object?
An open question
Travelling often encourages us to collect photographs, souvenirs and memorable experiences.
But what happens when we begin collecting understanding instead?
Perhaps the most meaningful part of a journey is not always the place itself, but the conversations that change the way we look at it.
If you had one free afternoon during your next journey, would you spend it looking at something beautiful, or learning how it came to be?
Continue Exploring
Discover why workshops, makers and materials have become a central part of the way I travel, and how craftsmanship changes the way we understand the world around us.
A weaving workshop in Uganda reveals how patience, repetition and rhythm remain visible inside handwoven cloth.
A small workshop inside Masindi market shows how old tyres become everyday objects through craftsmanship and careful observation.
A pottery workshop in Ouw revealed how clay, rhythm and everyday life remain closely connected on Saparua Island, where making still forms part of daily routines.
