Arts, crafts and music
Drawing, painting, pottery, printmaking, glass, lettering, yarn, music and writing: things to make and play, with what a first class is really like, what it costs and where to find one in the UK and the US.
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Demanding
Write the first full draft of a book
A finished draft, however rough, is something very few people who talk about writing a book ever hold in their hands.
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Moderate
Learn an instrument and play one piece for an audience
Choosing one piece and one listener turns vague practice into a small performance with a date on it.
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Gentle · UK
Join a choir with no audition
Singing pop and rock songs in harmony with a room full of people is a quick way to feel part of something.
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Moderate · US
Sing with a barbershop chorus
Barbershop is close four-part harmony sung without instruments, and the moment a chord locks into place is hard to forget.
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Moderate · UK
Join a community orchestra or band
Playing your part inside a full ensemble is a different thing entirely from practising alone at home.
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Moderate · UK
Sing Handel's Messiah with a scratch choir
The Really Big Chorus fills the Royal Albert Hall in London with singers for Messiah from Scratch, a performance in which the choir is the audience.
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Moderate
Submit a work to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
The Royal Academy of Arts in London describes its Summer Exhibition as the world's largest open-submission exhibition, and the judges first look at every entry as a…
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Gentle
Draw on location with Urban Sketchers
Urban Sketchers is a worldwide network of local chapters, each a community that meets to sketch on location and share the results.
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Moderate · UK
Learn an endangered heritage craft
The charity Heritage Crafts publishes the Red List of Endangered Crafts, which ranks traditional crafts by how likely they are to survive to the next generation.
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Gentle · UK and US
Knit or sew a blanket for Project Linus
Project Linus gives new, handmade quilts and blankets to children who are ill, distressed or in difficulty, and every one is made by a volunteer.
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Moderate · UK and US
Learn to ring church bells
Tower bell ringing is a team activity in which each ringer controls one bell by rope and keeps it in time with the others.
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Moderate
Pass a graded music exam
A graded music exam gives your playing or singing a fixed target, on a ladder that runs up to Grade 8.
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Gentle · UK
Join a camera club
A camera club puts your photographs in front of other photographers, which is a quick way to find out what works in a picture and what does not.
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Moderate · UK and US
Join an amateur theatre company
Amateur theatre groups stage everything from pantomimes to musicals, in venues that run from small village halls to large theatres.
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Moderate · UK and US
Turn a bowl on a lathe
Woodturning shapes a block of wood with hand-held tools while it spins on a lathe, and a bowl is one of the classic things to make.
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Gentle
Cover a table with the hat tile
The hat is a 13-sided shape that covers a flat surface without gaps but never in a repeating pattern, the first single tile known to do so.
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Gentle · UK and US
Go to a life drawing class
Drawing a person from life, in poses that last from a few seconds to twenty minutes, trains your eye faster than almost anything else.
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Moderate · UK and US
Learn to throw a pot on the wheel
Centring a lump of clay and pulling it up into a bowl is harder than it looks and absorbing from the first minute.
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Gentle · UK and US
Learn to paint in watercolour
Watercolour needs only a small box of paints, a few brushes and good paper, and it goes anywhere: a kitchen table, a garden, a hillside.
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Gentle · UK and US
Make a linocut print
Carve a design into a block of lino, roll ink over it and press paper onto it, and you can pull the same picture again and again.
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Moderate · UK and US
Make a stained glass panel
On a beginners' course you design a small panel, cut the glass, lead it up, solder the joints and take home a window piece that catches the light.
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Gentle · UK and US
Learn calligraphy
A broad-edged pen and a steady rhythm turn ordinary handwriting into lettering worth framing.
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Gentle · UK and US
Learn the ukulele
With four strings and a handful of chords you can strum along to songs within a few lessons, and ukulele groups meet in halls, pubs and libraries to play together.
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Gentle · UK and US
Join a knitting or crochet group
A knit and natter group is a cup of tea, conversation and a project on your needles, and many meet free in libraries and cafés.
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Gentle · UK and US
Take a creative writing course
A course gives you exercises, deadlines and readers, which is most of what a new writer lacks.
Course prices and dates come from each provider's own page on the day we checked it, and change; the provider's page is always the one to trust.
Every link was opened and read by us on the date shown on its page. Dates, places, prices and entry rules are on the official page, where they stay up to date.