Choose one section of your workshop and write out how you would say the instructions. Practice saying them out loud.

Can you do it again but using fewer words?

Once you are confident with your delivery of your chosen section, ask a friend or a family member for 10 minutes of their time and explain the activity to them. Once you’ve finished, ask them whether they understood your questions. Based on their feedback, edit your explanation until you are happy you are expressing yourself clearly and effectively.

•  How are you getting people into groups? Lots of workshops have group work, are you going to let them choose their own groups or choose them? Could you do this in a creative way?
• How do you make sure people have understood the workshop? How will you know if people aren’t understanding the activities? What can you do to make it as clear as possible?
• What are you doing in between giving people instructions? I like to eavesdrop on group work, to see the amazing creativity in the room and also check if a group is off task.
• Have a think about transitions – how are you going to organise everyone when moving from one activity to the next? These moments can feel quite chaotic or stressful as a new The ‘why’ of activities. Does every activity have a clear reason why it is in the plan? No activity should be done just for the sake of it, your time is limited in any workshop, so you want your participants to be getting the most out of it as possible.

Congratulations on completing our Intermediate Facilitation workshop. We hope you found it useful and that you can apply these exercises and ideas to your own facilitation process. If you’re interested in finding out more about facilitation you can download our free Inside Guide to Facilitation pack, which contains interviews with facilitators, further exercises to help you on your facilitation journey and links to more opportunities.

We’d love to know how you got on. You can reach out via social media @oldvictheatre #OVJoinIn to let us know what you thought of the workshop.

Old Vic Education Associate: Freyja Winterson

Videography and editing: Lisa Thomson

Graphic design: Matt Hodges