Vancouver’s Hobby Hop Festival Introduces Hobbyists to Creative Workshops in the City

It’s all-too-easy to call Vancouver no-fun-city when you’re not looking for places to try out new things or make new friends (hey, we’ve got a whole column called So Fun City to help you with that!), but that wasn’t the case for local software engineer Roxy Promhouse. She was looking to sign up for a six-week pottery course in Vancouver, but finding the right studio felt like a slog. She found class descriptions vague and couldn’t get a sense of a studio’s vibe. What should’ve been the beginning of a fun new pastime turned into a scavenger hunt.

It was the same feeling for Mansi Calapatti, a Toronto-based product manager. The bi-coastal friends’ simple (and mutual) frustration sparked an idea: why not find a way to “hobby hop?”

Together, the duo created a digital “passport” to local creativity—a curated list of affordable, hands-on workshops spanning pottery, painting, cake decorating, rug tufting and more each in their respective cities. The goal was to make it easier (and cheaper) for people to explore creative hobbies and support small, local studios while they were at it.

“We thought, if it’s tough for us, it’s probably tough for other people, too,”  Promhouse tells Vanmag.

“We really wanted to do the festival as a way to bring everybody together [and] kind of help make it a little bit more affordable for the fall. Just connect people with studios as much as possible.”

Once they launched their venture (called Maza Hobbies), the pair began noticing patterns in what people were searching for: workshops that were hands-on and that they could test out at a reasonable price.

“Most people were looking for workshops between $40 and $60,” Calapatti notes. “Things like pottery, painting and cooking came up again and again.”

Enter the Hobby Hop Festival, complete with a digital Hobby Hop Passport, that connects soon-to-be hobbyists directly to discounted workshops in their city.

For $9, participants can buy a passport that unlocks discounts and perks at more than ten partner studios per city. In Vancouver, that includes popular names like Café au Clay and the Banana Lab. Each participating business offers either a workshop discount or a small bonus gift—such as a free keepsake from a tufting workshop or discounts on a several-week-long pottery course.

Behind the scenes, Calapatti used her product management skills to model out everything from workshop capacity to demand forecasting. The team’s goal for their first season: around 200 passports sold per city by the end of the festival’s run. 

“It’s our first time running this, so we’re basing a lot on assumptions,” she admits with a laugh. “But the response so far has been great.”

Popular classes in Vancouver include bento cake decorating, tufting and painting workshops. 

“We definitely saw a spike when the festival launched in early October,” says Promhouse. “People love the idea of making something by hand, especially going into the holiday season.”

Hobby Hop Festival continues through November 30, and the founders are already looking ahead to expanding partnerships and adding new workshops.

“A lot of people tell us, ‘I’m not creative,’” Calapatti says. “But creativity takes so many forms. You don’t have to be perfect to enjoy it. We even share our own mistakes on social media. The point is just to try.”