Who runs the sessions.
Applied Improv Scotland is a one-person practice. The person you speak to on the call is the person in the room on the day, and for groups over 25 a second facilitator comes too.
I'm a software engineer during the week, and I perform improv in Glasgow. These sessions are where the two overlap.
I spend my working week in exactly the meetings I'm describing: the handover that keeps going wrong, the idea that gets talked over, the stand-up where the same two people do all the talking. I've also sat through plenty of corporate training as a participant, so I know the exact moment a room switches off. It's when the slides go up. People here are standing and working inside ten minutes, and every exercise has a point they can name afterwards.
The exercises come from improvisation because that is where these skills get drilled hardest. On stage there is nowhere to hide when you stop listening. The same is true in a difficult meeting, with more riding on it.
This is a young practice, and I'd rather tell you that here than have it surprise you on the call. It's why the prices are public, the Taster is published minute by minute, and the fee comes back if the room decides it wasn't worth it.
I run every session myself. Groups of 26 and over get a second facilitator, and that's in the quote from the start.
Four things worth knowing before you put this in front of your team.
Nobody is asked to be funny.
Comedy is not the instruction at any point. Teams laugh anyway, and that is a side effect.
Nobody performs alone.
Everything is played in pairs or small groups. There is no circle of people watching one person struggle.
You are on your feet in ten minutes.
The session is practice from the start. Reading about listening under pressure has never taught anybody to do it.
The room is kept safe by structure.
Small groups, work in pairs, and an order of exercises where the risk only rises once people are ready for it. That does more for a room than any speech about comfort zones.
It's an established field with a professional body behind it.
The Applied Improvisation Network has run since 2002, and practitioners across the UK deliver this work to public bodies, universities and health organisations. If you need to justify the spend to somebody who has never heard of it, there is a discipline to point at and a search term they can check.
Get a price and a date.
Tell me the group size and roughly when. You'll have a written quote back within one working day, and the fee is refunded in full if the session doesn't land.
Ask for a price