Impact, presence, communication, conflict resolution, collaboration and improvisation are all themes that can be chosen to focus on in one workshop.
Workshops can vary in length from 2 hours to a week long intensive course.
A sample half day Impact and Presence workshop could have the following format:
9.15 - 9.50am
A chance for people to fully appreciate why they are here and how participating in this workshop will improve their professional life
Intro: In a circle, everyone introduces themselves with their name and sharing something you would never guess about them or what makes them get out of bed in the morning or what moves them.
Reflect on how these introductions came across. Reflect in the context of the following enquiries: What is having presence? What is being impactful? How does presence and impact make a difference?
9.50am - 10.25am
Being creative and performing is very exposing and fills some people with dread. This warm up will put people at ease, inspire them and get their creative juices flowing. It will also begin to highlight and explain how to make the most of the basic and essential communication tools we have: the body and the voice.
Warm up: Relaxation and grounding exercises through breathing techniques, finding and connecting to the voice through vocal techniques exercises that explore resonance and projection and a musical motif development exercise - learn how to take a simple rhythm or melody and bring out the musicality in it.
10.25 - 10.55am
Singing breaks the ice, releases endorphins, brings people together.
Singing in a choir, is an excellent leveller in that it can help empower less confident people whilst helping over confident people to better consider the idea of blending in/modifying their voice to support others. In a good choir you should not hear anyone’s voice over another.
Working on the choirs performance of the song will: 1.) begin to help people understand more about how to bring out the best in a piece of musical material (this can apply to any material e.g. a lecture, a conference speech, any public speaking..), 2.) get people thinking about dynamics, colour, timing and other key aspects of creating impact, 3.) get people thinking about the effect of their body and of their voice.
Group Song: A simple song is taught and sung as a choir. This song may have more than one part. Once this simple song has been learnt, work on bringing out the delivery of this performance. How can we make this song impactful?
10.55 - 11.15am: Coffee Break
11.15 - 12pm
Learn how to become more aware of the powerful impact of the body and of the voice - every action on stage NO MATTER HOW SMALL AND SEEMINGLY INSIGNIFICANT means something/has an impact. What is your body saying about you? What is your body communicating? Is this what you want/mean to be communication? What is your voice saying about you? What is your voice communication? Is this what you want your voice to be communicating?
Group work: In groups of 2 - 4 people, using the tools acquired in the warm up, create a short (1-3 mins) performance that is impactful and that showcases each and everyone’s stage presence. This can be in the form of an arrangement of a song or a poem/spoken word piece with an accompanying musical score/sound scape or rhythmic beat. It does not need to be ‘High Art’, it can be as serious or as playful as the participants want it to be, but it does need to be convincing and have some flare.
12pm - 12.20pm
Refining: Back in groups, final tweaks and run throughs
12.20 - 12.50pm
Sharing: Each group performs their piece to the rest of the group
12.50 - 1.15pm
Feedback/Discussion/Evaluation: We discuss how each of these performances made an impact, how the process of creating the performance and performing was for each of the members of the group, how these performances could have been improved to be more impactful.