Pune’s newest art and craft spaces are small, privately run and easy to overlook. Yet their emergence points to a larger urban problem: adults may have access to homes, workplaces and commercial venues, but far fewer places where they can learn, make things, meet others and spend time without having to consume something or perform expertise.
Two spaces described by The Indian Express — one founded by artist and teacher Aditi Deo and another, The Craft Room in Kharadi, started by Rhoda Stanley — are responding to that gap through classes in drawing, painting, crochet, embroidery, quilting and other forms of making. Their work is not presented simply as a cultural or leisure offering. It is an attempt to create a local social setting for adults whose routines are shaped by work, family responsibilities, ageing, pregnancy, caregiving and the loss of informal community networks.
That distinction matters. In most discussions about urban amenities, the focus is on large public projects, commercial districts, sports facilities or formal cultural institutions. Small neighbourhood studios rarely appear in that frame. But the experience of a city is also shaped by modest spaces where people can spend time with others without needing a specific institutional identity — as a student, employee, customer or patient. These studios occupy that in-between territory.
Deo’s studio, inaugurated in August, grew out of an idea she had been developing for nearly two decades. She identified a lack of spaces where adults could learn and experiment without first having to prove that they were talented. Its classes include watercolour, pen-and-ink and pencil sketching, with yarn crafts, crochet, knitting, embroidery and other workshops being added gradually. A ukulele club has also begun, while a zine-making workshop is planned.
The flexibility of the model is significant. Participants can move between batches, attend individual sessions and access recordings. That arrangement recognises that time in a city is not distributed evenly. Adults may want to learn, but their schedules can be interrupted by employment, household work, childcare, health needs or responsibilities towards older family members. A fixed, highly formal course can therefore exclude precisely the people who might benefit from a local creative space.
The studio’s purpose, as described by Deo, extends beyond acquiring a skill. She speaks of adults who reach a stage of life with more time but fewer opportunities to connect with others. This is particularly relevant in cities where residential development can increase physical density without necessarily creating social proximity. People may live close to one another and still lack places where sustained, low-pressure interaction can occur.
The other space, The Craft Room in Kharadi, emerged from a different but related experience. Stanley, 62, returned to India in 2020 after spending years abroad. She observed people becoming increasingly isolated, indoors and dependent on screens. The space had initially been intended for her son’s clinic, but when he began practising elsewhere, Stanley chose not to rent it out. Instead, she used it for craft activities based on skills she had practised throughout her life.
The Craft Room also responds to a break in the transmission of traditional knowledge. Stanley observed that many people had seen a grandmother crochet, knit or embroider, but had not learnt those skills from their mothers. The result was a weakening of the everyday chain through which domestic and craft knowledge moved between generations. Her classes turn that knowledge into a shared, structured activity rather than leaving it as a memory of family life.
In its first year, the space attracted more than 100 participants, ranging from 10-year-olds to working professionals, mothers of children with special needs and expectant mothers. The range is important because it shows that the demand for such spaces is not confined to one age group or one definition of leisure. People may arrive seeking a skill, companionship, a break from screens or a way to recover a part of their identity that has been displaced by routine.
The structure of the classes reinforces that social function. Crochet and embroidery courses run for five sessions, while quilting takes six. They include material kits, lessons on the history of the crafts and informal conversations over tea. The finished object is only one outcome. The process also creates a recurring reason for people to meet, learn at a shared pace and speak to one another.
That pace contrasts with the dominant design of digital life. Online platforms make activities available instantly, but they also encourage rapid consumption, individualised attention and constant switching. Craft requires repetition, patience and physical involvement. It produces an object that records time and effort. In an urban setting, the act of making can therefore function as a form of social infrastructure: not infrastructure in the conventional engineering sense, but a setting that helps sustain relationships and belonging.
The spaces also complicate the idea that creative activity must lead to professional achievement. Deo’s approach is explicitly opposed to the assumption that participants need to be naturally talented or must pursue art for a certificate, career or measurable outcome. By removing the expectation of becoming a “good artist”, she argues, people can begin without fear of failure. This lowers the psychological barrier that often prevents adults from entering cultural or learning spaces.
Affordability and access remain unresolved questions. Paid classes help these studios operate, and the source does not provide their fees, occupancy costs or financial models. Deo hopes to keep parts of her studio accessible to people who want to sit, create or spend time in a creative environment, but the extent of that access is not established. Nor does the material indicate whether similar spaces are available across Pune’s neighbourhoods or whether participation is concentrated among residents who can afford discretionary time and money.
Those limitations matter because the wider urban need is not automatically met by the presence of two studios. A privately run space can respond quickly to a local gap, but it remains dependent on its founder, premises and ability to attract paying participants. Public libraries, community centres, cultural institutions and neighbourhood associations can provide more durable platforms, but the source does not indicate whether Pune’s planning or municipal systems are supporting this kind of adult learning and social activity.
The story nevertheless reveals an important dimension of urban planning. A city’s social life is not produced only by parks, roads, transit systems and large public buildings. It is also produced by whether residents can find accessible places to pause, learn and participate. Such spaces may be commercial, community-led or informal. Their value lies in the relationships and routines they enable, especially for people whose mobility, confidence or daily schedules make conventional cultural institutions difficult to use.
The experiences of the two founders also show how buildings acquire civic meaning through use. One studio repurposes a dedicated space for creative learning; The Craft Room emerged from a premises that might otherwise have been rented out. In both cases, the physical setting became more than a container for an activity. It became a reason for people to leave home, meet others and spend time together.
For Pune, the larger question is whether this demand can remain dependent on individual initiative or become part of a broader conversation about neighbourhood amenities. The evidence in the supplied report confirms participation, local interest and the social value described by founders and attendees. It does not establish the scale of citywide demand, the accessibility of these spaces or their long-term financial sustainability. Those are the questions that future reporting on Pune’s community infrastructure should follow.
What these studios demonstrate is narrower but still significant: urban well-being is shaped not only by how efficiently people move through the city, but also by whether the city gives them places to stay, make, learn and belong.