acta Community Theatre is proud to present the first session of the Elevate programme – Creative Facilitation: games, exercises, group dynamics, planning.

Elevate is a scheme run by acta and funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation and WECA. Over the course of nine months, we will train a core group of practitioners to make high-quality and impactful community-based theatre and arts initiatives. Some of the sessions will be open for all to book on to – we advise you follow us to get notified of future sessions too.

What will I do in this workshop?
• You’ll learn a range of games and exercises
• You’ll learn how to adapt games to the needs of the groups
• You will understand when to use a game and how it can benefit you
• Learn how to plan and structure a workshop• Learn the benefits of this work

This seminar will benefit anybody who facilitates groups as part of their work – not just for creative practitioners.

If the price is a barrier for you to attending the workshop, please email [email protected] to discuss how we can help you attend.

Join employee engagement and culture specialist Richard Roberts who will share his experiences delivering successful hybrid working! He’ll identify why organisations struggle, and what they can do to create the engaging culture needed to make it work.

People are going back to the office – but they want flexibility about homeworking too. Any organisation serious about attracting and retaining the best talent needs to get hybrid working right. The more successful you are at delivering this, the more engaged and productive your people will be. That’s why a successful hybrid working mix is so important. Employers won’t reap the benefits of hybrid working if they fail to create employee engagement along with it.

What you’ll learn:

This session is particularly relevant to anyone running an SME or those working in HR generalist roles in larger businesses, responsible for introducing hybrid and flexible working.  Perhaps you’re a senior manager who wants to get this balance right in order to retain your people. Anyone interested in how organisational culture is changing and where the future of work is going will get useful takeaways from this event.

This talk will be held at Origin Workspace in Berkeley Square. Join us from 12.30pm for tea/coffee and networking, with the talk beginning at 1pm.

About Richard 

Richard is an employee engagement and culture specialist and is passionate about building highly motivated and productive teams in both start-ups and larger organisations.

Formerly HR Director and Head of Employee Engagement at Virgin Mobile, he was most recently People Director at sustainable energy provider Pure Planet and developed many effective engagement tactics to make remote and hybrid working work. He also runs employee engagement consultancy, enRich.

He presents at UK and international conferences on the topics of employee engagement, culture and employer branding, drawing on his experiences at Virgin Mobile, Pure Planet and other organisations.

Tickets 

Tickets are priced at £15+VAT for BCI members and £30+VAT for non-members. Book your place below!

If you’re looking to reach your audience online, you need to use Instagram in way that makes it easy for your customers and clients to find you, understand what you offer them and how they can work with you and buy from you. Join Lou Chudley for this Wake Up Call which will help you get focused on making the most of Instagram for your business.

This webinar is going to be useful for anyone who is using Instagram to connect with their audience online and wants to learn how they can use Instagram to grow brand awareness and increase sales.

Register here!

About Lou

Lou Chudley is an Instagram Specialist based in Bristol, and founder of Spark Social. She works with business owners to help them to learn how to use Instagram to connect with their audiences online. Instagram is an ever evolving social media platform so it’s her job to help you to keep up to speed with all the new features and the ways your customers and clients are using Instagram so that you can make the most out of using Instagram for your business.

> See Spark Social’s member profile here

> See Spark Social’s website

> Follow Spark Social on Instagram

More about our ‘Wake Up Call’ webinar series

These sessions take place every other Friday morning from 8.30-9am, for the BCI community to share their pearls of wisdom with one another. The half hour webinars will involve a 15 minute presentation followed by a 10 minute facilitated Q&A, with introductions from the BCI team.

Our community is full of such amazing talent so we’re giving members the stage to talk about things that excite them so they can inspire their peers. The sessions will be a mix of expert tips and tricks and case studies – the perfect opportunity to learn something new before the week is out.

Our usual online format is an interactive ‘meeting’ but for this series we’re running webinars so that it’s easy to listen in while prepping for the day ahead or while having your breakfast! Cameras and mics will be off but you can ask your questions through the chat box or submit them beforehand.

Please get in touch with Sian if you’re interested in speaking at a future session.

The Wake Up Call sessions are exclusively for BCI members – register your free place below!

If you’re interested in becoming a member with BCI, you can read about the membership perks here.

The Lighthouse Social Summit is a FREE virtual event where you can hear the latest insights and thinking from industry leaders.

The agenda:

9.00am – Welcome to The Lighthouse Social Summit – September 2022

9.10am – The Value of Social Leadership with Damian Corbet

10.25am – Using Social Media Content to Change the World with Anu Hautalampi

10.30am – Break

10.45am – Social Media Updates with Luan Wise and Andy Lambert

12.00pm – Myths of Social Media with Michelle Carvill

12.30pm – Live Social Media Careers Q&A Panel Session – hosted by Luan Wise with Jaymie-Leigh Baker, Lauren Ahluwalia and Beth Thomas.

1.30pm – Event Ends

Celebrate Bristol’s local startup scene and watch the city’s top founders compete for a place in The Pitch grand final 2022.

The Pitch is one of the UK’s biggest startup competitions, giving startups the support to grow and the platform to raise investment.

Attend the Bristol regional final and watch the region’s most exciting startups pitch their idea to a team of top investors. Startups have just 90 seconds to pitch, then our panel of investors will follow up with questions and feedback.

The pitches will be followed by an evening of networking – accompanied by food and drink.

If you’re a local business owner or interested in the city’s startup scene, this event will help you:
– Network with other startups and your local business community
– Meet investors, and learn what they look out for
– Get inspired by awesome founders

Back for another takeover weekend, Cables & Cameras present: INSPIRED – a packed programme of VR workshops, keynote speakers and short film screenings and previews to celebrate home-grown filmmakers of colour from across the country, hosted by Watershed.

With contributions from one of the UK’s most empowering creative teams, Anthony and Teanne Andrews of the award-winning We Are Parable, guiding audiences on how to engage with international events in Black cinema and Somali feminist art collective dhaqan collective presenting the premiere of the acclaimed Somali film The Gravedigger’s Wife; we’ll be hearing from a plethora of exciting names in a packed schedule across a weekend set to explore Black / POC culture and talent both in front of and behind the camera.

Whether you’re an aspiring filmmaker trying to find your path into the industry, a more established creative interested in finding ways to develop your practice or just interested in discovering films by some of the most exciting creative talent out there, there’s something for everyone.

The SocialCode is a series of inclusive FREE tech talk events organised by Oscar Technology and Loopin.

We’re collaborating with market-leading employee wellbeing platform, Loopin, on our very first event in the South West region!

Whether you’re a seasoned tech veteran or just starting out, you are more than welcome to join us.

For this event we’ve got some incredible speakers lined-up who are renowned in the South West tech scene. They will be discussing a range of topics under the theme ‘Humans vs Tech: Building meaningful connections in today’s hybrid world.’ – (check out the full bios below). This includes interactive discussions around building emotionally and physically diverse tech teams, the importance of connecting beyond the screen, the role of tech in today’s hybrid world, and how tech is supporting employee mental health.

The SocialCode events provide a great opportunity to learn and network with like-minded local techies with complimentary drinks and goodies. Loopin has also lined up the local’s favourite Pizzeria, Flour and Ash, so you can enjoy FREE pizza too! What’s more, if you can’t attend this event in person, you can watch it via a Zoom live stream.

Loopin’s Slack-integrated tool helps support employee wellbeing and mental health, through social connection. Loopin aims to prevent trends of stress and burnout by encouraging employees to check-in with their daily mood and emotions, without fear of judgement.

Loopin is generously holding this event at their headquarters in Bristol City Centre, ideally located just a few minutes walk from Bristol Temple Meads.

ON THE DAY OF THE EVENT:

Doors will be open, and drinks will be available from 5:30pm.

THIS IS A HYBRID INSTALMENT OF THE SOCIALCODE! THIS EVENT WILL BE HELD BOTH IN PERSON AT RUNWAY EAST AND ALSO LIVE STREAMED FOR ANYBODY WHO CHOOSES NOT TO ATTEND THE EVENT IN PERSON.

EVENT LIVESTREAM LINK CONFIRMED 24 HOURS BEFORE EVENT.

The Speakers:

Ben Williams and Antony Thompson (He / Him) – Founders of Loopin – From a new era of work to a new age of wellbeing: The importance of sharing emotions.
During this insightful talk, former Royal Marine Commandos, Leadership Coaches, and Loopin Co-Founders, Ben and Antony, will answer questions around:

Julie Main – Master Principal Solution Architect at Qlik – The Importance of Storytelling with Data

From caveman drawings to silent movies, visual storytelling has been used to educate, engage, and motivate audiences for centuries. The digital age, however, has ushered in a new set of tools and technologies that can be used for visual storytelling.

So what makes a ‘good’ story? Julie will be showing you how you can get your insight into your data, collaborate, get the engagement from others and help to support and prompt decision making.

Amy Lobé (She / Her) – Senior Product Designer at Seccl – Empathy – The Access Tool to Accessibility

Amy will be holding an interactive session all about accessibility. In this talk, you will find out how empathy is the most powerful tool and how to build with accessibility in mind.

Using your own devices, you will be allowing yourselves to experience temporary access needs. You’ll be leaving this talk with a new appreciation for how situational, temporary and permanent access needs impact people’s use of your digital products.

This month’s free online Enterprise Nation meet-up for small businesses in Bristol and surrounding areas is on 31 August at 10am.

Come along ready to share a business challenge or need and the always friendly group of founders will come up with solutions!

The event is hosted by freelance journalist Dan Martin, Enterprise Nation’s local leader for Bristol.

Calling all tech entrepreneurs! Register for SETsquared Bristol’s open event to find out how their programme can help grow your business.

‘Discover SETsquared’ is SETsquared Bristol’s open event where you can find out about their award winning business support programme and meet the team. The next event is Wednesday 28 September from 4 – 5 pm and includes a talk from SETsquared Director, Marty Reid, Entrepreneur in Residence, Rick Chapman and a SETsquared alumni company.

Tech founders or aspiring tech entrepreneurs of all levels and backgrounds are welcome to attend.

Are you ready to experiment with progressive ways of working?

Would your team benefit from a commitment to learning about and seeding new ways of organising? If so, join my online course 🤗 The first eight cohorts have been full houses, the feedback has been fantastic (NPS score of 90! Over 70 is ‘world class’), and I can’t wait to go again. The feedback scores (out of five) are:

The next New Ways of Working online course starts on October 19 2022 and the sessions run every Wednesday, 14.25 – 16.35 for five weeks, so wrapping up on November 16.

The course objectives

The course objectives are for you to enjoy your job more and to be an even better member of your team. You’ll learn collaboration and leadership skills, how to hold meetings that don’t feel like a chore, and how to make better decisions by quickly seeking and integrating the wisdom of the group. You’ll learn how to give ‘brain-friendly’ feedback, recognise what’s getting in the way of being a great team, and understand the mindset and power dynamics that help or hinder change.

To do this we’ll borrow from the best sources. These include agile, self-management, organisational psychology, and the most progressive companies on the planet. There’s more detail below in the ‘Course overview’ section.

Who’s been attending?

It’s been incredible to be able to help so many people to experiment with new ways of working in so many diverse organisations, which have so far included: The United Nations, universities, Xero, Accenture, BJSS (tech consultancy), Mencap (UK charity), Shelter (UK charity), Haringey Council in London, Mercedes-Benz, Ofwat (UK government department), The Co-operative Group, The Soil Association, Klarna (fintech company), Jetstack (cloud tech company), Sport Wales, plus a US teaching organisation, an Italian marketing consultancy, a US digital consultancy, a UK AI and machine learning company, a digital studio in Belgium, a UK accountancy firm, and a lovely non-profit organisation in Bristol, my home.

What participants say

– By far one of the most useful, practical, engaging, interesting courses I’ve been on. Hats off to you, super well thought out, from a practical, mental and emotional perspective.

– The experimenting methodology gives me the opportunity to not only “take a course” but actually practising in the “real world”.

– The benefits to the business have been tangible and resulted in me thinking about work in a very different way.

– I loved having another colleague on the course and would totally recommend others try to do the same… I loved the organisation of the course, it all felt incredibly “slick.” … I loved Marks humble approach, he listened to us all intently and was patient with us when we needed more time on certain things.

– The experiments each week really helped me grow my comfort towards experimenting further. They gave me the perspective of how much needs to be a done, and an eye for what might be ‘bite-size’.

– I loved Marks generosity, he clearly spends a lot of time preparing and introduced me to very cool tools that we are now using in the organisation.

– The depth of experience and further research Mark has done to curate bite sized resource for us to cover weekly, in a No. of mediums, was incredibly satisfying to absorb and kept me engaged over the 5 weeks.

– As a facilitator, you do add quite a bit of magic sauce to holding the space, and your curation of materials is unbeatable.

Course overview

The course is led by me, Mark Eddleston. I’m a new ways of working consultant, coach, facilitator and Founder of Reinventing Work. Since 2015 I’ve been practising new ways of working and synthesising the mountain of information that’s out there. The New Ways of Working course is something of a greatest hits. We’ll fast forward to the trusted, tried and tested patterns that are found in some of the world’s most progressive organisations.

On this course, you’ll be practising and learning all the way. You’ll get better at listeningteamwork, and self-organising. There will be plenty of required pre-work ahead of each weekly meet online when we’ll reflect on this content together. Throughout the course, you will have the chance to ask questions and form a community on Slack. You’ll become familiar with Notion, where course content is shared, and with Focusmate which will help you to get through the content. You’ll also experience Mural and Liberating Structures.

Crucially, each week you will design an experiment that will be implemented in your own team.

You’ll form partnerships with classmates who will help you, hold you accountable to your experiment and be depending on you to do the same for them. Throughout, you’ll be experiencing some of the best collaboration tools and practises out there.

What we’ll work on

Throughout the course, you will learn progressive meeting structures that you can pop in your pocket, take back to work and use immediately.

What to expect

Expect practical, interactive and participatory. This isn’t easy work and it isn’t an easy workload. Each week the format looks like this:

So it’s a weekly commitment of at least 6 hours over five weeks. Some, ideally all, of which will take place during work time.

When

The five-week course begins on Wednesday, 19 October 2022. We meet every Wednesday from 14.25 – 16.35 GMT, wrapping up on 16 November 2022.

*Please note there is also two hours of pre-course work required before our first live session.

Eligibility

This course is for you if you are:

Cost

Your New Ways of Working journey will be more impactful if you have colleagues along for the ride, so you are advised (and incentivised) to bring one or two along.

Register

To secure your place double-check the eligibility criteria ☝️ then send a note to confirm ([email protected]) and that’s it, you’re enrolled!

Please note that cohorts are limited to 14 places.