In-House & Bespoke Training

This one-day course will teach you how to run small community fun days, arts events to large scale out door festivals. The training will focus on how you can work with local residents to organise and be part of your event.

The day will cover all basic events management skills including:

• Event planning
• Engaging local people
• Budgeting
• Licensing – Health & safety/Risk Assessments
• Management on Day
• Marketing and design
• Funding and sponsors

This will help people become more involved in their group, be part of the decision making process and deal with conflict if it arises. The day will be light hearted, fun and encouraging. There will be lots of games and exercises to draw out individual’s talents and skills.

The day will include:

• Arguing without arguing
• Positive body language
• Active listening
• Dealing difficult situations and conversations (‘I’ conversations)
• Using non-verbal meeting techniques (jazz hands!)
• Understanding why people get upset and what’s ‘really going on’ under the surface

This introduction to engaging diverse communities, is an inspiring and fun day of activities and practical ways to plan how to involve the wider community in the work you do. Learn how to create a fully accessible engagement strategy for marginalised groups in your area.

• What is diversity?
• Why involving the wider community is important
• How to develop a community engagement strategy
• Creating diverse partnerships and ensuring you deliver inclusive projects

Some groups struggle all of the time. All groups struggle some of the time. It’s a natural part of working together with other people. But it is possible to work well as a group. This course explores common problems in group dynamics and the attitudes and skills that can be used to solve them. We’ll explore official and unofficial power in groups; how differences between people can be turned from weaknesses to strengths; and how to include and value all members of your group to make it a brilliant group to work in.

Learn the nuts and bolts of what makes meetings work (and what stops them from working well). This includes how to encourage and enable everyone to be involved, and understanding the roles of a chair and facilitator. Find out how to design and plan meetings and workshops, end them effectively, as well as encourage group creativity. You’ll also learn some basic techniques of how to work with difficult behaviour.

People attending this course will learn how to:

• How and when to hold meetings and when to use other approaches
• Build a working relationship with an existing organisation or a group of individuals
• Use appropriate tools and techniques
• Develop facilitation work in ways appropriate to a range of diverse communities
• Deal with problematic situations
• Evaluate meetings
• Develop their communications skills

This course will help you to recruit and manage volunteers. Gain practical skills which will make working with volunteers easy. Find out why people get involved in volunteering activities and why it’s important to understand their motivations.

This course will cover:

• Why people volunteer and why these motivations are central to making sure your volunteers are happy and you get the job done
• How to create roles for volunteers
• How to recruit and publicise
• Skills in keeping your volunteers involved and interested
• Using non-hierarchical techniques & structures
• Maximising volunteer involvement and keeping it fun!

Learn how to reduce, prevent and resolve arguments and conflict in your group and at meetings.

All groups have arguments and disagreements but for some it can stop decisions being made, make some people feel bullied and even split a group up.

This practical one-day course will equip you with the tools to understand conflict and to develop personal conflict resolution strategies. Build your communication skills through working on what to say and how to approach conversations.

This course will cover how to:

• Listen well to others
• Have productive conversations
• Resolve arguments
• Recognise and apply appropriate states of mind for working with conflict Use these skills in running meetings and decision-making
• Understand your role in arguments

We all want our groups to get things done and the only way to do that is by making decisions at meetings. Getting agreement within a group can be difficult and time consuming. This days training will give you tools to make quality decisions that last and gain the support of the group.

You will learn the skills and techniques to make decisions that reflect the views of the whole partnership. Making decisions that stick is essential for any group, whether you’re working with five or 1,500.

You will also look at how to focus your groups’ motivations and get your partnerships in a position where they can start using ‘Consensus Decision Making’ (CDM) techniques. Consensus is a general agreement and consensus decision-making is a group decision-making process that seeks the consent of all participants. This course will help you to make decisions that reflect the values and knowledge of everyone and which build a greater sense of ownership of the final outcomes.

The day combines presentations, experiential sessions, group discussions and real life case studies.

This course will cover:

• Common obstacles to making decisions and practical techniques for how they can be avoided or dealt with
• True stories that show how the techniques are used
• The background and values of consensus decision-making
• A chance to work out how to use consensus decision-making in your community.

This training will give you all the skills you need to tell the world about your great partnership and the projects you run. Whether promoting events, advertising grants or recruiting new volunteers your publicity needs to be saying this clearly. This course will help you understand what you want to say and how best to say it.

The course covers:

• Deciding your crucial ‘messages’
• Understanding audiences
• Planning best type of publicity
• Branding
• Creating effective websites
• Designing leaflets & posters
• Essential media tips (local press, radio & TV)

A unique day of interactive and participatory learning to build your confidence as facilitator or workshop leader.

This will be unlike training you’ve experienced before – you’ll be challenged, engaged and hopefully excited while experiencing the power of deep facilitation.

You will develop your skills and attitudes as a facilitator in working with diverse groups and using participatory processes. We’ll look at what it means to be in the mind-set of a facilitator rather than to just ‘do facilitation’. The day will also build your confidence and give you a solid basis on which to develop your own style and techniques.

A day of participatory and experiential learning that will cover:

• What it means to be a facilitator
• Support groups to recognise and work with their power dynamics
• Understand and deal with ‘problem’ behaviour
• Cultivate empathy and the appreciation of differences
• How to frame a group’s needs
• To use questions effectively to draw out the experience of a group
• Using non-hierarchical processes

This is a very practical and hands on course to get you running small events and activities. You’ll learn how to set up and run easily manageable activities in your community centre, local town or village. You’ll have the chance to discuss what you want to run in your community and take away a plan on how to do it.

You will take part in lots of group work and lively activities that will inspire you in to action.

The course will help you set up:

• Information stalls
• Fetes
• Jumble sales
• Arts & crafts workshop
• Sport & hobby clubs
• Community consultations
• And any other community activities

A broad introductory day looking at how you can run your partnership more effectively and peacefully! You can decide which topics you’d like to focus more on to get most from the training.

• Organising meetings
• Working as a team
• Decision making
• Dealing with conflict

Please do get in touch and we can design the day to your specific requirements

Organisations are only as good as the people in them and getting new members is a great way to keep enthusiasm going. Some people volunteer for many years and others for a few months, weeks or even a day. With the right plan in place everyone involved can feel valued and be an effective member – regardless of how long they stay in the group. This training will help you create a plan to recruit the right volunteers for the right tasks.

The course covers:

• Planning roles
• Advertising
• Recruiting
• Making new members feel welcome

A unique day of interactive and participatory learning to build your confidence as Chair and how to have a ‘Revolving Chair’.

This will be unlike trainings you’ve experienced before – you’ll be challenged, engaged and hopefully excited at new possibilities. You will develop your skills and attitudes as a Chair in working with diverse groups and using participatory processes.

A day of experiential learning that will cover:

• What it means to be a Chair
• Supporting groups to recognise and work with their power dynamics
• Understand and deal with ‘problem’ behaviour
• Cultivate empathy and the appreciation of differences
• How to frame a group’s needs
• To use questions effectively to draw out the experience of a group
• Using non-hierarchical processes – including when to Chair & when to share chairing within the group (Revolving Chair)

Working as a team can be the best way to deliver your plan, run projects and hold amazing events. However, sometimes people find it hard to work in a team or even see the benefit of working collaboratively at all.
This course will teach you how to bring people together plus getting them working together and staying together!

The course covers:

• Understanding why collaboration is so important
• Planning & Strategy
• Recruiting
• Dealing with conflict
• Keeping people engaged
• Delegating, allocating and coordinating
• Empowering and creating ownership

This course will help you to plan and deliver a community art project with a local artist or art organisation. It will give you the confidence to commission someone, know you’re engaging the right audience and getting value for money.

The day will include:

• What you want the project to achieve
• Structure your project and understand key factors required
• Engaging your audience and community volunteers
• Getting value for money
• Co-planning the project with your contractor
• Managing deadlines & expectations
• Developing your own Community Art Project Checklist
• How to promote your project to the widest audience during and after completion
• How to evaluate projects

This day will provide an introduction to planning and delivering your own community art project. It will include practical skills needed to run a small art workshop and the second half of the day would see participants deliver workshops to each other.

A fun, interactive and probably a bit messy day! The day will include:

• Planning your project
• Recruiting & managing community volunteers
• Sourcing materials & locations/venues
• Practice at delivering an art, mural, installation, sculpture, etc. workshop

This course will help you make your projects & events accessible to all the residents in your area. You will learn the value of engaging with a wider audience and how best to reach out to so called ‘hidden communities’.

The course covers:

• Why diversity in important
• Discovering who lives in your area
• Valuing both ‘the usual suspects’ and diversity
• Taking the first step to engaging people
• Making publicity open to all
• Understanding the barriers to participation

Starting a project can be overwhelming and daunting at first. However, with the right plan and approach it can be exciting and fun. This course will give you the confidence to run your own projects, work with teams and measure your successes. You’ll learn how to start from the very beginning and look at what your project is trying to achieve through to measuring the impact it has had.

The day will include:

• Understanding aims & objectives
• Planning
• Timelines
• Budgeting
• Managing people
• Sharing your success
• Evaluating your work

This contains core topics from ‘Project Management’ course but also includes:

• Developing long-term project plans Managing expectations
• Setting targets and then changing them!
• Ongoing evaluation techniques

This course will guide you through the processes needed to engage with the decision-makers in your community. The day will cover areas of social and political action including the environment, conservation, housing, public services, planning and any issues important to your group. You will learn who makes decisions, when and how in your area, plus how to challenge them.

Course covers:

• Planning a campaign
• Organising your group & meetings
• Meetings with power holders (local government agencies, etc) Lobbying local agencies
• Mobilising local communities to action

It’s important to know if the work you’re doing is doing what you wanted it to do and the projects you fund are having a positive impact. This course will give you a comprehensive and practical grounding in monitoring and evaluation. You will learn how to define and measure outcomes and also begin to develop your own monitoring and evaluation framework, which you can start using straight away.

By the end of this course you will:

• Understand what your projects should be doing and what they actually are doing
• Be able to identify and describe the outcomes and impact of your work
• Be more aware of the different methods you can use to measure outcomes and impact
• Learn how to adapt projects and understand the unforeseen benefits

This day will give you a solid introduction to various ‘unconference’ techniques and skills to empower people at your events. You’ll experience and learn how to deliver exciting ways to motivate people including Open space and World Café.

People will leave your events feeling inspired and invigorated in to action!

For a group to work well it’s important that members feel listened to and that they have a say in how things are run. There are various ways you can avoid one person or small groups taking too much ownership and making others feel less involved. The benefits are enormous from making quicker decisions, happier members to avoiding people getting upset and leaving.

This course covers:

• How to work less hierarchically
• ‘Revolving Chair’ processes
• Power & rank within your group
• Your role in the group
• Dealing with long-term group relationships

This training will help you understand how to keep your collaborators happy and engage them in a way that is effective, innovative and inspiring. Every organisation has responsibilities to those who make you who you are. These could be your supporters, your funders, your board, your staff or your trustees.

To ensure that you keep receiving and building on the support network you have created it is crucial that you continue to develop effective and enduring stakeholder relationships – and this course will teach you how.

You will learn how to:

• Increase participation in your organisation, campaign or cause
• Identify, prioritise, and interact with your key players
• Assess the key issues relating to engagement
• Build capacity through your supporters
• How to expand and retain your community of stakeholders
• Develop an engagement strategy
• How to work with your participants on a change agenda

This participative and experiential training enables you to experiment with ideas and apply to your own projects. The course is based not only on our legal responsibilities but also the cultural context. We explore intersectional impacts of discrimination and marginalisation, anti-discriminatory action and allyship. We’ll support you to develop behaviours and actions that enhance your skills including in dealing with conflict that can arise with EDI issues.

You will learn
● Inclusive leadership
● Why diversity is important and what is equality and diversity
● Self- awareness – unconscious bias, prejudices & assumptions
● Having ‘difficult’ conversations
● When and what to challenge in terms of behaviours and attitudes
● Breaking down barriers
● Inclusive culture – weeding out harmful banter in a positive way
● Plus understanding the 2010 Equality Act

Who is this course for?
Whether new to working with diverse communities or wanting some fresh ideas, this is the course for you. The training is relevant for anyone who wants to embed their vision and values for equality and inclusion into their work and organisation. It is specifically designed for staff from charities, the public sector, community groups & social enterprises.

For many people public speaking is a nerve-wracking experience. Public speaking may be about presenting to a room of people, or it might just be asking questions at a public meeting or event.

This course is aimed at giving you the confidence to speak up and be heard. In a friendly and supportive environment, you’ll learn the dos and don’ts of public speaking and improve your communication skills.

This course will:

• enable you to speak with confidence at a public event
• plan and deliver a short presentation and use appropriate visual aids
• understand the problems and pitfalls and how to avoid them
• answer questions in a public forum.

Learn how to make local media work for your organisation and increase your success though building interest and support. Gain the skills and knowledge needed to prepare and package media stories, communicate your story and improve public relations using local, national, specialist and social media.

This course will cover:

• What makes a story, when and where to place stories
• Writing skills (press releases, comment pieces, newsletters, publicity and letters to editors)
• Dealing with negative media (crisis management)
• Feeling confident in developing and evaluating a media strategy

A simple guide for anyone designing or overseeing the design of leaflets, posters, banners, newsletters and e-flyers.

Publicise your event, group or campaign

• Create a marketing plan of how and where you will advertise
• Understand ‘target marketing’ so you get to your precise audience
• Understand simple design and writing rules
  Learn to use who, what, when, where and how
• How to use images and logos
• Get free online publicity using listings. networks & groups
• Create a buzz with stunts, flash mobs and events
• Utilise social media

Everyone communicates in a different way, using different forms of communication and at different times. Some people talk to each other using a landline, some a mobile and others mainly chat via email, text or social media.

This course will help you understand who needs to know what, when and how, and develop the best strategy.

The day will cover:

• What methods of communication people use and why
• Who needs to know what and when
• Setting up networks to make sure everyone gets a message
• Engaging isolated community members
• New and exciting ways to stay in touch
• Using community centres, notice boards & newsletters
• Developing your own plan to keep people informed

Sometimes it’s tricky knowing when to support the people you look after and when to let them make mistakes. We all want to empower the communities we work with and allow them to take ownership of their projects. However, we also don’t want them to fail when we think we can correct mistakes.

This course will help you strike the balance between being supportive and taking ‘arm’s length’ management style. You’ll also examine your own motivations, needs and ways to be clear in the role you play.

Learn:

• The ‘real’ needs and ‘wants’ of the group or individual
• Your role in the group dynamics
• Setting clear boundaries
• Know how and when to step in
• Alternatives to ‘you solving the problem’

The session will both enthuse and inform anyone, or any group, considering starting a social enterprise or ethical business. Jonathan Elliott, founder of Talk Action, went to a session just like this and now runs a national training & community development organisation. You’ll hear about the joys and the tears, but ultimately the excitement and passion that drives social change within the sector.

This course will give you the confidence to have your say at meetings and events. You’ll learn techniques to manage your nerves and plan exactly what you want to say and how to say it. The session will contain lots fun and interactive exercises to get you relaxed and ready to enjoy meetings!

You will learn how to:

• Understand group dynamics
• Relaxation techniques before and during meetings
• Plan what you want to say
• Deal with ‘difficult or argumentative’ people
• Step away from a meeting
• Speak confidently and calmly