Team events at The Clay Hole
An offsite your engineers will not quietly resent.
Three hours, up to 48 people, in Draper. Everybody is bad at it, including whoever booked it, and everybody can see that everybody is bad at it. That is the mechanism.
Nobody goes home with a mug. That is the entire point.
The short version. A three hour private pottery session for up to 48 people at our Draper studio, just off I-15. Up to 22 people can be on the wheels at once, or the whole group can hand build. Everyone gets 8 pounds of clay.
Nothing goes home that night. Pieces have to dry, get bisque fired, glazed and fired again, so they are collected later. A studio promising your team a finished mug in one evening is cutting a corner somewhere.
Why it works on technical teams
Four reasons, none of them about trust falls.
The hierarchy stops applying
Seniority does not transfer to a pottery wheel. Your principal engineer and the person who joined last month are equally hopeless in the first twenty minutes, and everyone notices.
Nobody has to perform
There is no sharing circle and no icebreaker. People talk because their hands are busy and they are sitting next to somebody, which is how adults actually start conversations.
It is genuinely difficult
This is not a passive activity with a facilitator. The clay is uncooperative, the failure is immediate and visible, and the whole room ends up laughing at the same kind of disaster.
It survives mixed enthusiasm
Somebody on your team did not want to come. They will be fine. Clay is absorbing enough that reluctance usually lasts about fifteen minutes.
How it runs
Three hours, roughly like this.
-
1
Doors and setup
Aprons, a quick tour, and people pick a side: wheels or hand building. You can bring food and drink in.
-
2
Instruction
Real teaching, not a demo. Instructors work the room the whole time rather than presenting from the front.
-
3
Making
The long middle. This is where the evening actually happens, and it is the part people are surprised to enjoy.
-
4
Clean up and collection
Everything stays. We fire it and you arrange collection once it is done.
The practical bit
What a planner needs to know.
| Thing | Detail |
|---|---|
| Length | Three hours |
| Group size | Up to 48 people |
| On the wheels | Up to 22 at once |
| Hand building | Up to 48 |
| Clay per person | 8 pounds |
| Notice needed | Ten days |
| Deposit | 50% holds the date, balance with the final headcount seven days out |
| Where | 12896 S Pony Express Rd, Suite 100, Draper, just off I-15 |
| To ask about a date | Text 385-441-6379 |
Current pricing lives on the team events page so there is only ever one copy of it to go stale.
Headcount locks a week out because clay gets portioned, stations get set and instructors get scheduled per person. It is not a sales tactic, it is how the room gets ready.
Keep going