Ever wish you could spend your vacation with an artist? Well, a new travel company aims to fill that void. Vacation With an Artist, a travel company that connects its customers with 69 local artists in 23 countries around the world, offering intensive one-on-one mini-apprenticeships at their studios.
That can mean learning anything from indigenous weaving techniques in Oaxaca to letter carving and letterpress in Ljubljana to porcelain ceramics in Paris. Each trip lasts up to seven days and lets travelers spend their time in the studio, working alongside the artist as they demonstrate their craft.
Vacation planners can search the company’s website by preferred medium or location. Artists are identified by their first names, and include painters and sculptors, as well as masters of more obscure crafts like fileteado, a traditional style of sign painting from Buenos Aires. You can book experiences that focus on various types of cooking, dance, and music, as well.
Each artist has been vetted by Vacation With an Artist founder Geetika Agrawal, a former advertising agency creative director who took a year-long sabbatical in 2015. As part of a program called Remote Year, she travelled to 12 different countries with the goal of making her dream of an arts-based vacation company a reality.
Vacation With an Artist offers unique apprenticeship vacations with artists like Juana, who teaches natural dyeing and indigenous weaving from her home and studio in Oaxaca, Mexico. Photo courtesy of Vacation With an Artist.
“I discovered my love for learning and travel during early college days, when I spent summers working with local artisans in small towns of Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu in India,” Agrawal told AdWeek. “I thought it would be fun to start a company that curates these artistic experiences and helps people find and book them easily.”
During her year abroad, Agrawal studied the local art forms in each country, seeking out the experts and convincing them to open the doors of their studios to international travelers.
The prices of the activities vary widely. Three days making wooden toys with Gonzalo in Buenos Aires is just $325, while bespoke shoemaking with Erik in Prague for five days is $3,325. For an additional fee, some of the artists will host guests in their homes. None of the packages cover travel expenses or food.