Primary Goal:
To grow and support the participant’s ability to pitch highly
conceptual products with personal and professional confidence.

Who?

Craft Council HotHouse Programme 2020.

HotHouse supports Designer-Makers at the start of their career. It is a part-time programme run over six-months that gives Designer-Makers the skills they need to build a sustainable successful craft business.

Speaking at Work was asked to curate and deliver a modular virtual training programme to support developing confidence when the participants were pitching themselves and their ideas.

Problem:

  • Participants who highly creative thinkers and solo workers were used to communicating through a third medium – their art. On the HotHouse Programme, they were being asked to positively self promote.
  • Participants personal confidence was low.
  • Participants were fearful of taking up new opportunities that would positively impact their business if it involved public speaking or self-promotion.
  • Participants were selling highly conceptual products.

Goals for Participants:

  • Increase personal confidence to positively promote themselves
  • Decrease the fear of new opportunities to positively promote their business
  • Improve the ability to connect with their audience
  • Use personal presence & structure for impact.

Solution:

  • Six-week virtual modular training and coaching programme.
  • Participants accessed 3 modules with 8 hours of training at their convenience and 6 hours of group coaching. During those coaching sessions, they each received peer and tutor feedback to focus their next stage of training.
  • Email support was available as needed.

Results:

  • Increased personal & professional confidence
  • Decreased fear of public speaking
  • Increased take-up of opportunities to promote themselves & their business
  • Increased clarity and distillation of thought when speaking
  • Increased ability to meaningfully connect with the audience through clarity & structure

“Confidence is the main thing holding me back in my practice. Your workshop has helped identify this for me, not with a sense of dread but with an understanding that I can gain confidence, communicate in a way that it is authentic yet engaging and work through tools to help me enjoy communicating my passion.”

“You will be very proud of me! I’ve just done a six-minute presentation on Zoom for Agile Structures and actually volunteered to do it! Thank you for giving me the confidence to do this.”

“It really has been life changing for me. Though I didn’t have time to prepare a live IG presentation or studio visit for the MADEMAKERS online event last weekend, I did do a few videos handling my brooches, which I was pleased with and I had a very positive response.”