Kolkata’s Kumartuli neighbourhood remains the centre of idol-crafting for Durga Puja, a Hindu festival that has been nominated for UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status. Iconic clay idols are prepared in Kumartuli for over six months, where festival preparations reach their peak in the monsoon and early autumn. While clay idol-making has been studied extensively as religious art/craft less attention has been paid within material religion to the creation and use of religious space as festival-making, and the type of spatial practices required. Constant negotiations and adaptations are required within cramped spaces to accommodate a large seasonal informal workforce and the multi-layered exchanges despite the failing infrastructure of the unorganized neighbourhood/slum of Kumartuli. To carry out this operation during the festive period within this densely inhabited area the existing physical infrastructure must be appropriated and adapted to insufficient services, place branding and varying degrees of policing. Based on ethnographic fieldnotes, mapping and visual documentation, this paper explores the operations and logistics of idol-making through the narrow lanes. It argues that what makes this an interesting “community of practice” is the dynamic between facilities being stretched to breaking point (and peoples’ grievances) as well as the continuing faith-led consumer demand for clay crafts. That is, scholarly understanding of Durga Puja as a religious practice or Kumartuli as a craft neighbourhood must be located against the complex backdrop of the growing commodification of a cultural craft, as well as how associated caste and other networks have evolved over time to facilitate these practices despite congested and competitive spatial and relational configurations.