Training & Mentoring

How might we... help you build more collaborative teams with design thinking skills and digital confidence?

Teams using post-it notes during a workshop

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What We Do

We provide training and mentoring for teams and individuals in:

Design Thinking
User Research
Digital Leadership
Making Collaboration Real
Working in and with the Creative and Cultural Industries

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The approaches, mindsets, and tools that we hone through our consultancy practice have proven to be especially useful and relevant for people looking to shape new ideas, partnerships, strategies and teams.

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Our training and mentoring is informed by real-world testing through our projects with ambitious, critical teams at some of the world’s leading creative organisations, as well as our international network of design thinking, digital and cultural leaders.

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How does our training work?

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Our support starts with exploring your existing expertise.

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Our content is tailored to your live challenge or initiative so you can progress your project while building your skills, confidence, and toolkit.

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We offer mentoring and coaching support beyond the training room to further embed learning in your teams. We also provide individual mentoring, including for participants on leadership development programmes.

Service List

Team and organisational training workshops, including;

Design Thinking
User Research
Digital Leadership
Making Collaboration Real
Working in and with the Creative and Cultural Industries
Introduction to Self Employment
Developing your Self Employment Offer

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Mentoring and ongoing ‘critical friend’ project support, focused on;

Digital leadership and transformation
Design thinking and user research
Collaboration

Case Studies

Lifting the Lid Workshop Series

Working in the Cultural Sector & Creative Industries

Design and host an annual events series for arts and humanities AHRC-funded PhD students across 17 universities in the UK, designed to 'lift the lid' on the reality of working in and collaborating with the creative industries and cultural sector. The series is tailored to the needs of the attedees and includes sessions on careers, applying for jobs, the latest policy and strategy, and research opportunities.

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Imperial War Museums

Design Thinking Training

Delivered bespoke design thinking training series for staff leading work across departments at IWM London, including marketing, audience engagement, capital development and digital specialists. This training was combined with mentoring, online seminars, and facilitated Design Sprint workshops to develop audience engagement and digital product work.

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The Space Digital Mentoring

Strategic Digital Mentoring Programme

We developed a new Strategic Digital Mentoring Programme to build digital capacity of cultural organisations in England in 2018. With our support, this programme has now been expanded and implemented in Scotland and Wales. We continue to support programme iteration and whole-cohort activity across annual cohorts for Arts Council England, Creative Scotland and Arts Council Wales.

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Introduction to Self-Employment

Training for ESRC & AHRC PhD students

We have designed and delivered this series of workshops introducing PhD students to the realities and opportunities of self employment since 2018. Sessions have been run with PhD researchers in ESRC and AHRC subject areas from more than 20 UK universities including Nottingham, Birmingham, Bristol, Exeter and Reading. The sessions are tailored to the needs of those who sign up to attend, and have explored everything from tax and insurance to identifying independent research specialisms, making a pitch, and finding collaborators.

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ESRC PhD Careers Workshops

Exploring Creative Non-Academic Careers for PhD researchers

We design and deliver this annual workshop series for ESRC students who are part of the South West Doctoral Training Partnership at Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth, UWE, Bath Spa, Bournemouth and Plymouth Marjon Universities. These hands-on sessions explore non-academic career pathways for PhD students in economics, social sciences and interdisciplinary subject areas related to ESRC research themes.

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Belgrade Theatre

Developing Creative Online Sessions Workshop

Delivered training in online sessions and user-centred approaches for Belgrade partners and staff across departments to inform the development of creative online sessions.

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Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature

Design Sprint Options Appraisal

Design sprint and user research to shape a roadmap for the organisation. This was accompanied by ‘critical friend’ mentoring support to the organisation in developing its governance, business and delivery model in response to new opportunities for programming and partnership.

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Jerwood Charitable Foundation

Creative Bursaries Programme Development

Designed and facilitated team away day to introduce design thinking approaches and inform the development of the Weston Jerwood Creative Bursaries Programme. Each year, the programme supports up to 50 salaried jobs in arts and cultural organisations across the UK, for individuals from low socio-economic backgrounds.

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