Corporate Programmes
Suitable for team-building, boosting creativity and imagination.
Need an activity to wind down together as a team? Or looking for a new and creative approach in the workplace?
You can even squeeze in a lunch time programme!
Creative Writing
Journaling for Wellness
Psychologists and psychotherapists have long recognised the therapeutic benefits of writing in helping their clients gain understanding of the complexities of the world they live in.
If you have had a taste and appreciation of writing as a salve, this workshop on journaling will help you discover some good practices and ideas on how to deepen the experience.
If you’d like to discover how you may avail yourself of the resources within you through journaling, this workshop will show you the ropes and help you make a start to knowing yourself better.
Writing Your Family Story
This workshop will help you transform your photos, mementoes and memories into a family story that will be treasured by your family. Led by facilitators from The History Workroom, this workshop will provide tips on how to organise and preserve treasured items and memories;
• show how to use selected public databases and resources to search for details and historical context;
• give examples on how to compile and write a meaningful story of your family; and
• explore the exciting options in presenting and sharing your family story.
Throughout the process, the facilitators will share their own experiences in family history and discuss several case studies to give participants ideas and inspiration for their own projects.
Course outline
• Why write your family story? Exploration of the different ways of doing family history.
• Short lecture and discussion on various sources of family history and tips on how to organise and preserve treasured items and memories.
• Step-by-step demonstration on how to use selected local public online databases to search for clues and details.
• Group discussion on participants’ family history projects/goals.
• Case study discussion of various family stories, their pros and cons, and relevance for participants’ projects.
By the end of the workshop, participants will:
• Be able to organise and adopt effective methods of preserving family photos, documents and memories;
• Be able to use selected online databases to research their family history;
• Understand the pros and cons of various options for writing, presenting and sharing their family story; and
• Develop a roadmap for their family story project.
Storytelling
(Communication)
The workshop will give participants an understanding of how stories work on a brain level and how that makes storytelling a powerful tool for influence. The facilitator will provide practical guidance on how to effectively use stories in the corporate world both for communications with colleagues and with stakeholders. Through individual and groupwork, participants will learn how to craft stories that will help people connect, embrace change and build a cohesive organisation and community.
Workshop Outline
This workshop will explore how stories and storytelling techniques will enable the team to improve on communications within the organisation as well as effective transmission of information. The session will include:
- Why storytelling is such a powerful communication tool and our best tool for influence
- Understanding the elements of story structure and how they can be used to give the best potential for influence
- The use of storytelling as an effective way of transmitting organisational values and messages.
Including:
- What makes a good story?
- What makes effective storytelling?
- How to collect and record stories effectively
- How to learn and craft a story effectively
- Sharing of stories through guided storytelling activities
Workshop Objectives
The learning objectives would include the following:
- Gain an understanding of why storytelling is such a powerful communication tool for leadership
- Get insights into what makes a story have influence potential
- Discover how storytelling can be used for a variety of organisational purposes
- Learn how to use stories to engage attention and effectively transmit information
- Hands-on experience of effective strategies for preparing, telling and sharing stories
- Practice telling stories in a supportive environment
(Communication)
The workshop will cover:
- Why storytelling is an effective tool for influence in all aspects of life
- Exploring your life experiences for useful stories
- Types of stories to prepare for interviews
- How to structure your stories so that they have a greater potential for influence
- Methods for polishing up your stories
Narrative Games
Roleplaying Game
Participants have awoken on a beleaguered colony spaceship.
Due to failing engines and other resource shortages, players must prove to the AI and the rest of the crew through a series of tests that they are worthy of being kept alive and that they should be part of the new space colony. Anyone who displeases the AI is turned into Cake.
Social Conflict.
Roleplaying Game
Participants are members of a royal court, who have come to celebrate the Emperor.
Each courtier has both a court-facing and hidden motive, and they must interact with each other over the course of dinner to try to achieve both. The Emperor dispenses favour and disfavour at his whim.
Social Conflict.
Roleplaying Game
Participants are rookie secret agents being put through their final tests before they are promoted to full Agent.
Just so happens that an emergency happens - there's a double Agent in the upper ranks, and because the rookies are still unknown faces, they're tasked to solve the puzzles and bring the agent to justice!
This game is a loosely-confined escape room with physical puzzles and designed for a group of ~20 pax to play together. Can be adapted for different age groups.
Escape Room Puzzle.
Marketing & Copywriting
Today’s marketers have to assess the value of an ever-increasing range of activities and justify decisions in terms of ROI. As if that’s not challenge enough, directors, authors and editors can all have high expectations, yet often time and money are in short supply.
This workshop will equip you with tools, techniques and templates to help you plan effective marketing with confidence, even when resources are limited.
We will cover:
• Helpful marketing tools – market segmentation, the 4Ps, the marketing funnel, the marketing mix, and how these apply in the real world.
• Planning and managing marketing – using real-life case examples we’ll explore realistic marketing plan and budget templates, to give you tools to help structure your own plans.
• Marketing channels – what you decide to do depends on your audience. We’ll look at when and how to use the most popular and effective channels – including social media, email marketing, publicity and PR, conferences and events, and print collateral.
• Decision-making, project-management, and staying in control – what do you do when the goalposts move? No matter how well you plan and schedule, reality can diverge from your plans.
• Measuring success – we can’t measure everything, but this is a round-up of the tools available to us, how we should use them, and what other evidence of impact we can look for.
Suitable for:
Anyone relatively new to a marketing role and looking for a practical overview of the key principles and getting started effectively. Particularly suitable if you’re from smaller companies, especially if your product or service is specialist and your budgets are small.
Copywriting is simply writing to persuade, and applies equally to marketing emails to be sent to customers, and to internal proposals and presentations. It’s a skill that shouldn’t be left to chance, and one that – when done consistently well – will enhance your brand identity.
Whether you want a course that focuses on writing marketing copy, or to introduce the skills of sound copywriting across multiple departments, this in-company workshop can be tailored to your needs and business context. It will be especially useful if you are introducing tone of voice/brand guidelines. Topics may include:
• Universal copywriting principles – there are lots of tips and techniques that can help you focus on what you need to say and that will help you to write efficiently, concisely and with confidence. The course will share plenty of these, and encourage you to too!
• Grabbing attention in the fewest possible words – you may have a lot you could say, but how do you choose what will have most impact on readers? How to cut with confidence, no matter how specialist the message.
• Writing copy that always feels fresh – when we’re short of time (always) it’s tempting to fall back on generic formulas and adjectives. We’ll look at ‘quick fixes’ for livening up tired and predictable copy.
• Why copywriting needs to feel like a personal conversation – nobody responds positively to a corporate tone of voice, but how do you judge what’s appropriate? It’s essential to get the tone just right, including ‘flexing’ it for different audiences, and balancing plain English and the jargon that may come with the product.
• Storytelling and visual copy – to act on marketing copy, readers need to relate to the content, and imagine themselves using it. Examples, scenarios and extracts are all examples of storytelling in action. Learn how they can transform the impact of your writing in any context.
• What you NEED to know about copywriting for SEO – being found by customers using search engines is no longer down to metadata. If you are writing content that sits on your website, you need to know how to reach more potential customers.
• Adapting your copy to different channels – including web pages, emails, social media, blogs, press releases, print collateral.
• Practical exercises and plenty of discussion – reviewing real copy examples, including your own.
Suitable for:
Anyone writing copy with the aim of persuading readers to do something! Especially useful if you’re looking to improve copywriting skills and develop confidence through new techniques, but if you’re a seasoned copywriter you’ll welcome the chance to take a fresh look at a familiar challenge.
In publishing, it’s equally appropriate for both editorial and marketing roles and will be delivered fully within a publishing context. We can also look specifically at back cover copy, author bios, and working with authors on product copy as required.
