Follow up to networking with a difference

Last week a group of twelve of us meet in 'Dreaming' for an alternative networking session.

We started with a warm up using clay, a simple and effective process to settle people into a session and build group repor and respect.
Everyone is invited to take some clay, as much or as little as they want. Then sitting in a circle everyone rolled their clay into a ball. After a short time I asked everyone to offer their clay ball to the person sitting on the left. Being clear that no one moulded or shaped someone else's 'clay ball' (a group of women with these instructions are fine but with teenage boys and mixed adult group I slightly rephrase the instructions!). The group passed the clay ball around noticing how each of them felt; wet, dry, warm, hot, cold, heavy, light, etc. We passed the clay balls around until our own returned to us. People commented on how different some of the balls felt. The clay was returned to the materials table.

Then I asked everyone to sit comfortably and I facilitated a deep relaxation followed by a guided visualisation which lasted for thirty minutes.

After bringing people back to the room I invited the participants to create something from their relaxation or guided visualisation using a broad range of art materials. The group did not need any encouragement they got stuck in there. It was fantastic to watch these business women accessing their creativity.

After the set amount of time everyone was brought back into the circle and asked to share their work. Being clear that if they did not want to that was okay to.

I was fascinated several of the women had not done anything like this before but what they produced was visually lovely, colourful and they had just started the task without thinking about it (the powerful connection in the grounding relaxation facilitates participants getting out of their own way to just start often with surprising results). Everyone really enjoyed the relaxation.

After sharing the artwork I got people to introduce themselves say who they were, what their business was and involved. It was great to have consciously left this to the end as it removed any conditions on the coming together of the group. We meet as a group, got connected and then discovered some more about each other.

Then we had some light refreshments, chatted for a while and all headed home.

If you would like me to work with you, your business, a network, community group, club, etc please get in touch.

Some feedback I have gotten since:

"I just wanted to thank you very much for a fantastic evening on Tuesday. I had a brilliant time. The format of the evening was great and I really hope you do many more of them. It was such an escape from the daily grind and it really spurred me on to get my creative juices flowing again." via email Linda, business owner manager.

"session the other night was very enjoyable. Thanks." via text Gillian, business owner.

I have developed this type of workshop over the past twenty years. Combining my facilitation and training experience with my creative skills, study in art therapy, my ability to prompt others creativity and build connections. If you would like to use the ideas or workshop outlined above feel free too but please credit it to Roisin Markham and Ballygarrett Art Studios. Also if you do use the ideas you find here let me know how you got on with them.

If you are interested in attending a training session on how to facilitate workshops like this contact me.