How to organise a writing workshop in your company
YOUR COMPLETE GUIDE TO ORGANISING A SUCCESSFUL WRITING WORKSHOP IN YOUR COMPANY
Having fallen by the wayside these past years, writing is once again a key skill in corporate and professional settings. As well as being ergonomical and beneficial for your posture in a workplace setting, handwriting stimulates personal expression and creativity. Organising a writing workshop for your teams outside of their daily routine is an excellent way for them to develop their imagination and organise their thought processes.
From the choice of theme and the selection of writing instruments to the types of exercises and the organisation of the workshop: Caran d’Ache offers a complete guide to organising a stimulating and team-building corporate writing workshop.
WHY HAVE A WRITING WORKSHOP IN THE WORKPLACE?
Stimulate your teams’ imagination with writing
Writing encourages the exploration of new thought processes and helps to free the mind and reveal innovative ideas. Writing also contributes to developing the imagination, which is hugely beneficial when it comes to exploring new themes within a team. Organising a corporate writing workshop is therefore the perfect opportunity to share a creative experience.
FIVE STEPS TO ORGANISING A SUCCESSFUL CORPORATE WRITING WORKSHOP
Step 1 – Identify the objectives and format of the writing workshop
Before you get down to organising a writing workshop in your company, think about the objectives of this experience. Is the point of the workshop to reinforce team cohesion? Stimulate the participants’ creative expression? Contribute to a work project? A writing workshop can be a way of revealing a common vision and defining a project’s editorial line.
Have you determined the workshop’s aims? Now choose how to set it up:
• The place: the workshop can take place on company premises or at an outside location.
• The format: determine whether this is an individual workshop or whether participants will work in pairs or groups.
• The length: is this a one-off workshop or will there be several sessions?
• The follow-up: offer participants the possibility to give a written or oral presentation of what they did in a restitution workshop.
Step 2 – Select an inspiring theme
Once you have defined the objectives and format of the workshop, choose a theme that will be the common thread throughout the session. To make the workshop fertile ground for innovative ideas, choose a form of expression which is adapted to your workgroup’s aims.
Here a few themes that are adapted to a corporate writing workshop:
• Expanding imagination through writing: the team can write a fictional literary text or poetry.
• Introspective expression: starting a travel log, journaling or writing stories are tasks that can be done alone or in groups.
• Creative writing: suggest that the participants explore the art of calligraphy or work on creative lettering.
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Step 3 – Make a list of writing instruments for the workshop
Organising a successful writing workshop involves selecting the right writing instruments. To make the writing experience a pleasant one, provide high-quality tools that are comfortable to use.
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Step 4 – Organise stimulating writing tasks
Whether it’s a short or a long workshop, help your teams to work on their narrative skills with a few simple exercises:
• Free writing involves writing spontaneously without any considerations of style or form. A helpful technique to combat writer’s block.
• Composing puns, play-on-words and rhymes to work on semantic creativity.
• Inventive descriptions to describe the details of a place, object or memory: an exercise that’s perfect for stimulating the imagination.
• Collective writing of a text to work on team cohesion and promote idea-sharing.
Step 5 – Provide the right resources and adapted location
Have you worked out the content of your workshop? Now all you need is to supplement it and make it happen. Novels, references, poetry readings, writing advice: suggest a reading list or inspiring resources to assist your team’s writing experience.
On the logistical side, opt for a quiet and inspiring space, such as an airy room or a peaceful garden.
📅 Would you like to organise a creative workshop for your team? Caran d’Ache offers themed workshops for companies located in French-speaking Switzerland. All necessary supplies are provided, and participants go home with their work at the end of the session. Contact us to specify your requests!
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