lift up your voice

Of all the workshops that SoW offers, the intention of Lift Up Your Voice is perhaps the most simple. We want to give service users a space to gain confidence in their own public speaking capabilities. To do this, the course will be divided into 4 simple sections:

Theory - We will introduce fundamental principles of presentation and help attendees understand how to make content engaging and make psychological connections within a space.

Warm-up - Using movement and sensory observations, this portion of the session will help attendees feel grounded in the space and demonstrate that it is a safe and supportive environment.

Practise - Now the safe space has been established, attendees will then practise their own articulation through a series of exercises and prompts that look at targeted aspects of communication.

Feedback - Finally, each service user will get an opportunity to present something to the room, and will receive personalised feedback on areas of development that can bolster presentation and communication skills.

What this course offers is the opportunity to practise and to gain insight into performance, working with specifically-selected pieces to practise with before moving on to materials related to their work (such as client presentation topics, weekly meetings or progress reports), demonstrating how the skills and techniques learned in the workshop can be carried into daily responsibilities.

Example Exercise:

Warm Up (Verbal Tennis)

Time for a language-rally! In this exercise, attendees will be split into two teams, given a category and will have a certain amount of time in which to say an item, object or something relevant to that topic (for example if the topic were sport, then they have to mention a sport without any repetitions or anything that is judged to be unrelated).

Only one person can give an answer at a time, and that person then cannot answer again until all other members of the team have given an answer. Attendees will have to work together to figure out who has already spoken, what has already been mentioned (to avoid repetition) and which of the team hasn’t spoken yet to ensure everyone has had been able to contribute.