Team events blog
In our blog, we share our observations and insight from our 15 years of experience in the team building events and corporate entertainment businesses. Sign up to our mailing list by clicking on the link below to automatically receive our weekly blog and news by email:
Sign up to our mailing listBespoke team building events
There is simply no point having the word ‘creative’ in your company name and not putting it into action when a client requires something completely new and bespoke!
One of our aims is to be an ideas factory for our clients. Clients call or email us with an objective, a brief or a conference theme and want to hear what we can add to their own thoughts to inspire their participants.
There is always a special buzz in the office when this type of enquiry comes in. We gather round, fire ideas to each other and filter out what is practical, relevant and unique. Watching an off-the-wall comment growing into a practical option, and then a real event, is very exciting and satisfying!
We have our extensive range of in-house artists, trainers and facilitators, as well as our trusted external suppliers, to cover almost any situation – from simple to complex.
Here are just some examples of bespoke corporate team events we have been involved in.
Two weeks ago, a last-minute client asked if, in addition to providing a One Voice team building singing event in the day, we could also provide a fun tabletop challenge over dinner. Very quickly, we had to create a series of interactive table tasks as part of a huge competition for 270 people! We incorporated cake decoration and portrait painting and had an incredible Street Moves table-to-table dancing competition.
Just last week, I sat at the top table of a senior partners’ dinner, billed as the guest speaker. All night long, I fended off questions about my role in the organization when in fact I was an imposter! The minute I started my speech, we sprang our Crashing Waiters on the unsuspecting diners. The recent dinner guests that I’d just met just shook their heads in disbelief at the transformation.
To highlight the conference theme of ‘combining the old with the new’, we delivered a ‘Matrix’ drumming event. Emerging from the dry ice and revolving stage set, our drumming event team appeared in long leather coats and sunglasses, while the strobe lights flashed. They then proceeded to blend electronic drums with traditional drums.
One of the strangest requests we have received was to somehow teach a conference audience every possible sound a bicycle could make and then perform these live in perfect synchronisation with a cycling film that had been specially commissioned.
You can, of course, have ideas all day long but they have work! We never forget that we are trusted with budgets and the responsibility to ensure that events flow perfectly on the day. It is our job to take unique concepts and ideas and make them real. As ever, this is only successfully achieved through the skill of facilitators, artists and instructors.
So, please talk to us about your wild and wacky thoughts and ideas for your next corporate event and give us the opportunity to create some unforgettable moments for your company.
For more information about our bespoke team activities, or our team events in general, please contact us. Please don’t forget to sign up to our mailing list to receive our weekly blogs directly by email.
Affordable activities for big teams
We’ve had a few weeks of relatively large conferences where we have been asked to deliver activities to groups of 300 or more delegates. With additional Haka and One Voice team singing events going on too, it’s been all go!
There is something undeniably impressive when large groups combine their efforts to play, perform and respond together as one.
When there is a big group involved, some organisers do not consider having team building activities, energisers or ice breakers, fearing high costs. This is a shame since our ice breakers and team building events for large groups are not only unforgettable spectacles but can be very affordable, particularly when you work out the cost on a per head basis.
We focus on entertaining and inspiring so many people at once using relatively few facilitators and expensive equipment, and without the need for additional breakout rooms.
Clients can choose from many different events for large groups. We have specially adapted many of our team activities to suit a vast working environment and the logistical needs of big participant numbers.
Here are just a few of the bigger events we have been involved with in the last week.
I took a trip to a bitterly cold Vienna with four huge bags of boomwhackers. When I met the Managing Director of the client organisation, he pointed to the ballroom of the hotel and, with raised eyebrows, asked me if I was simply going to walk in with the bags and entertain 400 people for an hour on my own. “Yes”, I replied, and I did!
In the same week, and in 40 minutes, our Thriller team transformed a tightly-packed conference room of over 700 delegates into a sea of writhing zombies. Given the limited time and space, we had re-choreographed the Thriller dance into a more static, theatre-style seating affair. We put strips of material under each chair that made our well-turned-out audience look much more decayed and distressed. With the addition of some basic horror make up, we had a colossal creepy performance.
With our Junk Funk and Street Moves team on stage performing an early morning wake up for over 400 delegates, we revived and woke up the audience further by teaching some basic body percussion and human beat box action!
These types of events deliver maximum impact with little or no equipment to cause logistical concerns or time delays. This means that the next speaker can ride the wave of fantastic team spirit that has been generated in the room without losing momentum or time moving, storing, or negotiating around, equipment.
So, if you are planning a future conference, team building event or other off-site event, please don’t be put off by scale or fear of high costs. I urge you to contact us and just think big!
Transformational team building using singing
For years, we steered away from offering team building singing events. I suppose we saw them as a more difficult ‘mountain to climb’ with clients. Because almost every event we deliver has an instant effect and obvious positive reaction, getting participants over the years of embarrassment about the sound of their own voices once seemed too risky a corporate option.
It was actually our repeat clients asking for other musical ideas, together with the growing popularity of TV shows featuring singing, that eventually led us to introduce our One Voice as a regular team building event.
After delivering the first vocal team building activity over ten years ago, it suddenly struck us that the fear some participants initially feel is what makes the final outcome so rewarding and full of learning. By the time all the preparation work has been done for the final performance, there are always completely different expectations in the room.
It’s our core purpose to show participants what is achievable with just a little focus, effort and faith. There is little point, or team development, in playing safe all the time.
One Voice has secured its place among our most popular indoor team activities alongside drumming and Haka. While drumming is powerful and Haka is passionate, our team building singing activities deliver an unmatched sense of disbelief among participants about what can be achieved.
Last week, I witnessed the initial look of intrepidation on the faces of 200 delegates as they were told that, in just one hour, they would be back in the room, being filmed singing in three-part harmony with a live band!
There were some very worried faces as participants departed to their breakout rooms to meet their vocal coaches and accompanist.
In keeping with our policy of only having the best facilitators for the job in hand, we had amassed an impressive group of professionals and studio musicians, including an award-winning TV composer, a West End singer, Jools Holland’s backing vocalist and Kylie Minogue’s keyboard player.
Our team slowly won the group’s trust and respect, starting the journey of getting participants to believe in themselves. Before they knew it, our once-suspicious delegates were singing at the top of their voices, standing on their chairs and itching to put their individual performances together with the other vocal breakout groups.
Back in the main plenary room, the band was all set up and in position, with tables cleared and video camera ready to roll. It was time to bring the three separate groups together for the first time!
A very different set of people walked in to the room to the one I saw leaving earlier. Participants were smiling, excited and eager to perform. The final performance began! The team sang wonderfully together, with beaming smiles, outstretched hands and swaying movements.
Once again, group singing proved to be a transformational team building experience.
I would like to say a huge thank you to our One Voice team and James Adkins – our in-house AV expert – for making it all happen on the night.
For more information about our singing activities, or our team events in general, please contact us. Please don’t forget to sign up to our mailing list to receive our weekly blogs directly by email.
