Team events at The Clay Hole

An offsite your engineers will not quietly resent.

A work team around a long communal table at a pottery team event, one man laughing at his collapsed piece while an instructor helps someone throw

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.

Pricing and booking Text us about a date

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. 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. 2

    Instruction

    Real teaching, not a demo. Instructors work the room the whole time rather than presenting from the front.

  3. 3

    Making

    The long middle. This is where the evening actually happens, and it is the part people are surprised to enjoy.

  4. 4

    Clean up and collection

    Everything stays. We fire it and you arrange collection once it is done.

A wide view down The Clay Hole studio floor in Draper, Utah, with members working at rows of pottery wheels and loaded ware shelves along both walls
The room holds 29 wheels. Twenty-two people can throw at once, or 48 can hand build.

The practical bit

What a planner needs to know.

ThingDetail
LengthThree hours
Group sizeUp to 48 people
On the wheelsUp to 22 at once
Hand buildingUp to 48
Clay per person8 pounds
Notice neededTen days
Deposit50% holds the date, balance with the final headcount seven days out
Where12896 S Pony Express Rd, Suite 100, Draper, just off I-15
To ask about a dateText 385-225-4117

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.

See pricing and book

Keep going

Related reading.

Team events, pricing and bookingThe full logistics page with current pricing. Private parties and family eventsThe same room for a different kind of group. The best networking in Salt Lake is not networkingOn the hours it actually takes to know people, and our no pitching rule. How a pottery wheel worksUseful if you want to know what your team will be attempting. Pottery near Silicon SlopesGetting here from the tech corridor. Pottery for engineersThe hub for this section of the site.