The Surprising Benefits of a New Hobby

Looking for a new hobby in Cape Town? Learning something new isn't just a good way to fill a Saturday. Research suggests hobbies and new skills may be good for your brain, your wellbeing — and your social life.

Remember hobbies?

Not side hustles. Not personal brands. Not something you need to monetise, master or post about. Just something you do because you're curious about it.

As adults, we tend to become very good at doing the things we already know how to do. We work. We exercise in familiar ways. We see the same people. We go to the same places. And somewhere along the way, being absolutely terrible at something new becomes surprisingly rare.

Perhaps we should change that.

Learning new things is good for your brain

Your brain likes a challenge.

Research into learning in later adulthood has found encouraging links between taking on new, cognitively demanding skills and aspects of memory and executive function. In one well-known study, older adults spent three months learning skills such as digital photography and quilting. Those doing the more demanding new activities showed improvements in episodic memory compared with groups doing less cognitively challenging activities.

Another study followed adults who learned several real-world skills — including Spanish, drawing and music composition — and found improvements in cognitive control that were still evident at a one-year follow-up. The researchers caution that the studies were small, so this isn't proof that taking a pottery class will magically future-proof your brain. But it adds to an interesting body of evidence supporting lifelong learning.

The important bit may be the newness and challenge.

Following instructions. Coordinating your hands differently. Remembering unfamiliar information. Making mistakes. Trying again.

In other words, being a beginner.

Hobbies may make us happier, too

The benefits don't appear to stop at cognition. A large international study published in Nature Medicine looked at more than 93,000 people across 16 countries and found that having a hobby was associated with greater happiness and life satisfaction, better self-reported health and fewer depressive symptoms among older adults.

Creative hobbies are particularly interesting. A 2024 study involving 7,182 adults found that participation in arts and crafts was associated with greater life satisfaction, happiness and a stronger sense that life is worthwhile, even after researchers accounted for factors including age, health, employment and income. Which seems a fairly compelling argument for making the wonky bowl.

And then there's the social bit

Starting a hobby also gives you something increasingly difficult to find as an adult: a reason to be in the same room as the same people regularly.

Friendship was easy when school, university and early jobs repeatedly put us in rooms full of potential friends. Adult life doesn't always do that.

A running club, sewing group, dance class or weekly pottery session quietly recreates some of those conditions. You don't have to walk into a room with the explicit and slightly terrifying objective of making friends. You arrive to learn salsa or sew a shirt or throw clay at a wheel.

The conversation has somewhere to start. And repeated, low-pressure contact matters. The World Health Organization now describes social connection as an important determinant of health and wellbeing, encompassing not only how many relationships we have, but how often we interact and the quality of those relationships.

Perhaps that's one reason hobbies can be particularly valuable: the activity gives you a reason to show up; the people give you a reason to come back.

So, what could you learn in Cape Town?

Quite a lot, as it turns out. If you've always fancied making something with your hands, Baikt Ceramics on Kloof Street runs its Pottery & Mimosas workshops every Saturday. Complete beginners are welcome, including people arriving on their own, and if clay turns out to be your thing, there's a weekly Pottery Club where you can keep learning alongside other regulars.

If sewing is the mysterious domestic art you somehow never acquired, Sew it Together in Muizenberg offers beginner sewing courses with machines and supplies available. There's also a monthly Sewing Club and studio membership for people who want somewhere to work on their own projects alongside other sewing enthusiasts.

Prefer learning something you can eat? Stir Crazy Cooking School runs hands-on cooking classes covering cuisines from Korean and Thai to Spanish, Mediterranean and South African cooking. The emphasis isn't only on learning recipes: the kitchen is deliberately positioned as a place to cook, create and connect.

And then there's The Deckle Edge in Salt River, which is something of a lucky packet for curious people. Its rotating programme of creative workshops has included cyanotype, lino printing, bookbinding, leather craft, calligraphy, resin jewellery, screen printing, watercolour and even learning to write and draw with glass pens.

That's before you get to Cape Town's dance classes, photography courses, cooking workshops, weaving, jewellery making, woodworking, foraging, sailing, surfing and all the other things you may not yet know you're interested in.

You don't need to find your passion

There's a lot of pressure in the idea of finding your thing. Maybe don't.

Choose something that sounds vaguely interesting and try it once. Take the beginner class. Go to the workshop alone. Borrow the equipment before buying it. Make the ugly first version. Discover that you hate lino printing and unexpectedly love sewing. A hobby doesn't have to become part of your identity to have been worth doing. At worst, you've spent an afternoon doing something different.

At best, you might find a new skill, a new group of people, a different part of Cape Town — or something that makes your week a little more interesting.

Not sure where to begin? Explore Beautiful Cape Town's LEARN and MAKE sections for classes, workshops and new hobbies in Cape Town — or let our CHANCE section choose something for you and leave it in serendipity's hands.