Would You Spend 5 Days Learning One Craft?

An interview with VAWAA's founder betting on human creativity, a fully remote travel role for $75k, and the sustainability trends defining 2026.

Apr 30, 2026

This week’s edition is long but one of the best conversations I’ve ever had, so I encourage you to open it in full in your email. 💌

We’ve never had more access to information than we do now. Open up TikTok and we can watch someone throw pottery in Kyoto, or search “textile weaving” on Google and find an artisan in Oaxaca. We can research exactly how shoes are crafted, from start to finish, without leaving our home. For a fleeting second, we enjoy that dopamine hit and moment of immersion.

But knowing—or watching—how something has been made is different than learning it with your own hands. And imagine if you could do alongside a master artisan who’s spent their entire life devoted to that art form.

Last year, I stumbled upon VAWAA, a global platform offering mini-apprenticeships following these very artisans, and I immediately shared it here—a nod to the rise in craft getaways creative workshops, reading retreats.

But the more I considered what VAWAA uniquely offers, the more my interest piqued.

Apprenticeships aren’t new, of course. It’s one of the oldest forms of knowledge transfer, with families passing on traditional crafts and skills for centuries. But unlike the short-term experiences you might find on Airbnb or with a three-day respite around reading books (which, to be fair, I still welcome), mini-apprenticeships collectively help us remember what makes us human and what creativity can be.

With VAWAA, you can book a mini-apprenticeship with one of 200+ artists in 40+ countries around the globe. Each runs three to seven days long, with four to six dedicated hours in the studio each day, alongside your maker one-on-one. The price for a VAWAA includes an artist fee for their time and lessons, exclusive access to their studio space, use of their tools and equipment, your own personal artwork to bring home, and a small fee to VAWAA that allows them to run this platform (an invaluable and sorely needed infrastructure for artists, as you’ll soon see).

Today, I’m honored to speak with VAWAA’s founder, Geetika Agrawal, about how VAWAA’s model came to be, why craft and creativity are the ultimate slow travel markers, and the reason they intentionally don’t market experiences as “authentic.”

If you’re interested in supporting further, as I am:

You can use code DEPARTUREFRIEND for 10% off your own VAWAA. (I do not earn any commission and this is not sponsored.)
You can follow along with their work on Instagram or their weekly newsletter.
Or, if you want to take it to the next level and also invest in human creativity (like I will be!): VAWAA is currently accepting early investor reservations to help grow the next chapter of their platform. Their private reservations are hosted on Wefunder ahead of a public launch on May 8th. You can reserve your allocation here starting at $1,000, and early reservation perks are here. Legal disclaimer: At this stage, VAWAA is “testing the waters” under Regulation Crowdfunding, which means no money or other consideration is being solicited and will not be accepted if sent.

Geetika, thank you so much for taking the time—and congrats on 10+ years of VAWAA! In college, you spent your summers working with local artisans across Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu. You then had an idea about building VAWAA, and in 2015, you took a one-year sabbatical traveling 12 countries in 12 months with the hopes of launching the company. By November of that year, VAWAA was born. How did that intersection between craft, apprenticeship, and travel come into sharp focus for you?

I learned that spending my time with artists was where the most transformational learning happened, when you're sitting down with someone who's spent their life dedicated to what they do. To be spending the time in their environment which, in this case, is a studio, in their place of craft, and to be surrounded by the community that is always intersecting with their craft is very powerful. You're almost living someone else's life.

I started off spending that time with master artists because I was a designer, and that was extra special, because artists are the ambassadors for our past, present, and future. They are a reflection of the times. Their work is grounded in the past, but it's always looking to the future. That perspective was really inspiring and it changed my perspective on how to see the world, and how to incorporate that into my life.

That has always stayed with me. The goal was combining that into an idea where people could do what I had been doing personally: to discover these artists, get access to them, and be able to spend multiple days in their studio with them. VAWAA was just a manifestation of a possibility that I had based on my lived experience.

*traditional brass bell making // courtesy of VAWAA*

The range of apprenticeships VAWAA offers varies widely and covers a lot of niche crafts: I’ve seen traditional brass bell making in Toyama, Japan; Sicilian puppets in Sicily, Italy; woodturning in Montevideo, Uruguay. You recently shared you have 1,200+ artists on the waitlist to host apprenticeships all through word-of-mouth. How do you identify new partners/crafts to work with, and how do you slowly expand VAWAA’s reach in a sustainable way that benefits all parties involved?

We want to represent the world of crafts on our platform, because craft is just a medium for this transformation and people have different entry points. Our goal is just that people find any channel or any medium that resonates with them for their own learning: Some have it through painting, some have it through basket weaving, some have it through shoe making, bicycle making, whatever it may be. And aren't we so lucky to be living in a world so rich with different expressions of our creativity?

And aren’t we so lucky to be living in a world so rich with different expressions of our creativity? —Geetika Agrawal, VAWAA

Then it comes down to, where is their demand? What are people really wanting to learn? What are the entry points that people find it easy to go deeper into their own creative practice?

For example, that could be ceramics. Within ceramics, you have a world in itself—you have different kinds of clay, firing techniques, making techniques, from hand building to wheel building. How can we just go deep as well as wide?

In terms of how to build it sustainably so that everyone benefits from it—interestingly, right now, there is absolutely zero infrastructure for artists to share their knowledge. If you look at the art world, which is a $60 billion industry, all the infrastructure for artists is around selling their artwork, whether it's fairs, exhibitions, galleries, markets, Etsy, or Amazon.

You do see artists who are on Instagram, but then there's a whole world of artists who are not connected to technology, who don't have the marketing means or know-how around technology to increase their reach. So we want to be able to create an infrastructure for artists around the world, across all levels of technology literacy, whether they are a master artist in Indonesia or India or Paris or an Indigenous community. That's the breadth of ideas that are expressions of our human creativity.

At the same time, these artists require a lot of handholding because this is new to them. We want to help them through onboarding, through how to structure their program, to help them with guest communications. And that takes time. That's where the balance is. With 1,200+ artists on the wait list, we need to get through them quickly so they can start teaching and start sharing their knowledge, but we want to make sure that the ones on the platform feel fully supported. That they can teach comfortably.

It's always a fine balance, and we've been especially careful not opening the doors completely that all these 1,200 artists could onboard overnight technically. Because that would not set them up for success, right? That would not give them the support that they need. It would also not ensure that the guests who are going to learn from them have a quality of experience and transformation for the time and money that they're investing in it. Quality becomes really important.

Let's say that you've identified a demand. How then do you onboard artists, or how long does that process take to workshop together that this is the format you [the artist] generally want to follow and this is the best experience for all parties involved? How do you set them up for that success?

We believe that we create the systems and then the artists fill it with their creativity. We have created systems that generally say, “This is a multi-day experience. This is kind of the overall arc of the experience.” But it's more about the process, not the outcome.

It’s about personalization, so there's no fixed itinerary. There's a creative brief before people go there, where they share their goals and what they want to accomplish, and then the artist personalizes for it.

Shifting gears, I really love the concept of VAWAA gift cards, where loved ones can purchase gift cards towards an apprenticeship, and the recipient has the luxury of choice to pick what they’re most interested in. You mentioned an uptick in men buying their wives gift cards as gifts, but I'm curious about the inverse: Women investing in themselves, or women pooling together to send a friend. How common is that? Some apprenticeships can host multiple people, but I imagine there’s a large proportion of solo women travelers.

70% of the guests who go on a VAWAA are women, in the age group of 30 to 75. What's really interesting is almost 40% of the women go solo. But another 60% are going with their girlfriends. They're going with their friends, whether they are young friends, empty nesters, or celebrating one of their friend's 50th birthday. It's mothers and daughters, sisters, literally all kinds of women relationships who are going on a VAWAA for a very shared experience.

There is a stat that I always talk about: Morgan Stanley came up with a stat that 45% of the women in the “prime working ages” of 25 to 45 years old will be single by 2030. I'm not surprised by that stat because we already know a lot of single (and child-free by choice) women who are affluent, independent, and highly professional. They're leading amazing lives, and if they are not investing their time and money in raising a child or a family, they're investing in themselves because they still care about investing and living a very meaningful, purposeful life.

For us, VAWAA really falls in that space—for women who are investing in themselves, looking for constant personal growth transformation to be the best version of themselves, whether it's solo, whether it's with friends.

Thank you for sharing that. Departure’s audience is 95% women and I think some readers are interested in a solo trip but have never gone on one before, and VAWAA seems like a “vetted” experience that they can ease into.

100%. There are a couple of blogs where people went on on their first solo trip to VAWAA, because they just thought that this was just such a easy way to go.

The other way I see it is, it's not just pure safety. That artist is your friend, and a person there in that place, who knows the place, who is going to be there with you for several days. And whatever you need, they're there. So it's also safety, but it's also around “You are not going to be alone.”

ebru painting & quilt making // courtesy of VAWAA

I think of it as the discernment between “I'm alone” and “I'm lonely.” You still have a human connection happening.

In that vein, each mini-apprenticeship you offer spans across several days, with about four to six hours in the studio each day. Whereas most travelers are conditioned to optimize (more landmarks, more cities, more passport stamps), how did you land on that “slow travel” model? There are probably several factors at play: The time it takes to actually learn—and internalize—a creative art form, visitors wanting free time, intentionally protecting the artist’s time and energy. Have you workshopped or tweaked that format over the years?

Our real goal is can we create an experience that leads to transformation? And transformation needs time. There is no magic pill. It's a process. It's a journey. So for us, you have to slow down, connect with the process, connect with the person you are learning from, connect with the community. You have to connect with yourself. There’s no shortcut to it.

The number of days an experience lasts was purely how long does it actually take to make a clay pot, for example. I live in Brooklyn and I can take a class and I can make a small bowl in a quick one hour workshop. But I have no idea where the clay comes from, how the clay processes, what happens after I finish it? How does it dry? I don't get to walk away with that understanding.

And unless we really truly understand how things work and we fully give it the time to absorb, nothing happens. You have just done a quick class or you've watched a quick TikTok and it's given you the dopamine hit for sure, but nothing has internally shifted.

Unless we really truly understand how things work and we fully give it the time to absorb, nothing happens. —Geetika Agrawal, VAWAA

In fact, to your question about if we tweaked formats: For ceramics, we did because we were noticing some of the artists had initially structured it for four days, and they were finding four days was just not enough time for pieces to dry. Clay needs to dry. It could be rainy outside. It could be cold outside. Things that are not in our control. And so, well, you wait, and you go through it and you do other things. We extended most of our ceramic experiences to five days minimum.

In some cases, let's say a basket-weaving session was three days, six hours a day. And we realized, six hours a day basket-weaving is physically very tiring. Instead of compressing it in three days, let's spread it out over four days. Instead of doing six hours a day, let's do four hours a day.

We have a very strong feedback loop after every VAWAA with the artist and with the guests, to see what really worked, what didn't work, and where do we need to tweak at the system level.

On a recent visit to India, my family and I stopped at a rug-making facility where we watched weavers produce these intricate patterns. We ended up purchasing a hand-knotted silk runner from them that cost about $1,000 USD—but friends back home in the states gawked at the price. (To be fair, it’s definitely an investment piece!)

But traditional crafts are often undervalued, in a world where mass production and poor quality take precedence over labor, skill, and time, where I could hop onto Wayfair or Amazon and buy a similar aesthetic for a fraction of the price. I know you work with the artisans themselves on understanding their pricing, fees, etc. but how does VAWAA help consumers and visitors understand the value of artists’ work and the importance of supporting their livelihoods? Do you see VAWAA shifting how guests spend and what they’re willing to pay for, post-experience?

What I've found is it all comes down to creating the right dynamic and the right level of transparency and structures. We know how market forces work. If you price something super low, people are always going to want something cheaper, right? You need to feel confident to price yourself correctly and then stand by it.

We also never go to artists and say, do your VAWAAs for $400 because that's what customers want to pay. We say, price it for what is right for your time. In fact, sometimes they price it quite low because they don't know the full market, and we guide them. Or sometimes they price it too high. That happens, too.

We tell them: Make sure it is sustainable for you. Make sure you are calculating your time, your materials, your knowledge, your studio time, your prep time; incorporate everything into your pricing. We just lead from that place and give confidence to the artists to price themselves the right way.

Then for customers: A lot of customers in the early days, they would come to us and say, “This is $1,400 for five days. This is too expensive. I can do a class for $30.” Then we have to then explain why—we are very transparent about our pricing. This is why it costs this, this is how much time you're spending, this is one-on-one, there are other materials. We can break down to the penny of how we price things.

We haven't done a lot of education at a brand level, which we want to do more of, but at a customer’s individual level, we do a lot of that. In general, we always talk about the artists and the apprenticeships in an elevated way, where people understand what went into them: the years of training and mastery and discipline that went into it, the resources that went into it. For us, it’s about showing them the value and that's how you educate people.

It's very “show not tell.” Similarly, you recently spoke on a podcast about your hesitancy to use the word “authentic,” which I found really refreshing, and how you said you want to focus on “timeless ideas, not trending ideas.” For our readers, can you speak to that decision to steer away from positioning VAWAA as an “authentic experience”?

It is down to “show, don't tell.” We are building a company based on this idea that has existed for years; this is not something we invented. We as humans have been learning from people forever. We've been learning from masters forever, so it's not the first time we created an authentic experience. We don't need to say that for the sake of marketing.

I've spent over a decade in marketing, and words come and go, and then they lose meaning. If you're trying to build something that is for real, you have to ground yourself in truth. You have to ground yourself in being honest. Give people the value and let people choose the word they want to choose to describe it.

Some people call VAWAA a very authentic experience. We don't say that. They say that. That's perfect because that was their experience of it. Some people found it transformative. They use that word because that was their experience. Someone said it was very human and intimate. Use that word. So we leave the choice to the person who experienced it, to describe it in the way that they experienced it.

It’s no surprise that women specifically feel burnout more, and creative retreats are on the rise. (You and I both shared that WSJ piece on craft retreats!) We also know travelers can’t partake in these apprenticeships indefinitely, so how have you seen travelers bring what they’ve learned back home and incorporate them into their daily lives, amidst full-time jobs, families, and shortening attention spans? You’ve spoken before about how a VAWAA you did with a photojournalist completely changed how you take photos now, for example.

We hear of them all the time—in various capacities, because everyone has a different experience. Just this morning, I got an email from one of our guests who had never considered felting. She went and did felting with her husband two years ago.

After the experience, they turned the garage into a felting studio. And they've spent thousands of hours felting since then, and she didn't even think felting would be her thing. And it's become a big part of her life now. Others are coming back and saying, I just learned to be patient with myself.

You once shared a story about how, when you were growing up in India, you wanted to study architecture but there weren’t any architects in your family, so you just started calling people from the Yellow Pages. That eagerness and curiosity stood out to me, because I think it shows in VAWAA’s mission in working with artists today: To go directly to the source, and to also build that infrastructure that was missing for them like it was missing for you. Has that felt like a through-line across your life?

I think it's just how I operate. But also I think how most of us operate, right? That's why even the internet exists—because we're seeking information and the internet helps us get that information. That's just the human quest to find out whatever we’re looking for.

For me, that quest goes a little further: I'm going to find it some way or the other, and being resourceful. Because I've spent a couple of decades doing this on my own, traveling around the world, finding these artists somehow, you know. There was no directory and I was still able to do this. I’ve found that’s not a natural thing for a lot of people, so how can I make that easier for others? How do I make this accessible for everybody, and also for the artists?

How did you find artists or experiences when there wasn't a directory?

I would land in a place and then just start walking the streets, and through a window, I would see someone working. I would peek in, I would knock, I would say, “Hello, I'm Geetika.” They would say, hello, connect, and then just start doing it. It was just very instinctual.

What a beautiful way to use a strength of yours to build this for other people. So many people like me are very grateful you’re doing this.

Two French scholars analyzed 73 guest stories from VAWAA and found four ways that guests are connecting deeply with creative travel: Domestic sphere (feeling at home with local artists and their communities), mentorship from expert artists, embodiment with hands-on multi-sensory practice, and bonding with meaningful others. (You noted this was also the first empirical study on intimacy in creative tourism, which is incredible.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about the hands-on piece: Last summer, I was attacked by a foster dog and lost a lot of use in my right hand/arm. That feeling is slowly coming back, but as a left-handed person, I didn’t realize how impactful that lack of sensory experience would be for my right hand. In an increasingly visual world on our phones and TVs, how important is that tactile, hands-on learning for visitors? Even if someone cannot do a VAWAA experience—because frankly, it does cost time and disposable income—how can they embrace tactile experiences?

Because we're living in an increasingly visual world, we need to have more embodied experiences to connect to our different senses. It is becoming really important for us to stay centered, to stay grounded, to not get carried away with all the chaos of the world that we are in right now.

We don't need to feel limited by our hands, because there is so much you can still do. As an example, you can dance, and that's creativity. It's not dependent on your hands, right? You may not have very fine motor skills, but you could still rub your hands in mud and clay and paint finger-painting. And that's the beauty.

If we are really looking for some tactile creativity, just cook your food. Make your sandwich. When we are making a sandwich, we are making a choice with bread, a layer of tomato, a layer of lettuce. Does the lettuce go above or under? What other color are we going to add? Every day we're living with so much creativity: how we get our desk organized, how we put up flowers, where we put up flowers. All of that is tactile creativity.

If everything else feels like a big leap, take a class nearby. You don't have to go to another country to do a VAWAA. That's just one way to do it. But you can start here in your local community or you can do an online class. There are so many ways to nurture your own creativity by creating time and space for it.

musical instrument making & wet felting // courtesy of VAWAA

To close us out, are there other women-led organizations, artisan collectives, or slow travel experiences you think deserve more attention—or any you’re particularly interested in trying yourself?

I'm doing another VAWAA in August with Merlyn. She's a world-renowned printmaker in the South of the UK, and she makes woodblock prints. She is 70 plus years old. She goes swimming in the ocean, takes photos of the wild ocean, and then she carves that in wood and makes prints out of that. I want be like her, so that's why I am going for that VAWAA.

There are also a few other companies who are doing group trips—for example, Ace Camps and The Thread Caravan. I am not personally aware of the one-on-one model the way we have it, which is over multiple days and very slow. That said, group trips can still be a really wonderful way to slow down.

Finally, I’d love to shout out Lauren Bates of Wild Terrains and Deborah Needleman (former editor of WSJ Magazine and T: The New York Times Style Magazine, a design-world tastemaker, and basket maker).

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