NWG Innovation festival

The Northumbrian Water Group Innovation Festival is unique, pioneering a five-day event focused on championing new ways of thinking to address real-world problems. Attendees work on sprints, or short practical sessions, to develop hacks and solutions to a range of challenges. You can watch how it played out here

The challenge:

The festival is designed to get young people excited about STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths). It is fun and dynamic and gets participants working together using creativity and imagination to solve real-life challenges. Attendees participate in sprint sessions in which they are posed challenges related to a STEM topic and encouraged to come up with as many solutions and practical ideas as possible.

In order to get the most from these sessions, participants are encouraged to use creativity and imagination. Fearlessness and confidence help them present their ideas. The ethos of the event is that there is no such thing as a bad idea or a stupid question. Organisers wanted to help participants by providing workshops throughout the event that helped them develop creative thinking, communication skills and resilience.

What we did:

We used our expertise with young people and designed workshops that explored resilience, communication, growth mindset and cognitive flexibility. Importantly the workshops had to be fun, engaging and dynamic. We ran over 30 of these mini workshops on personal skills for eight to 18 year olds, adjusting content for the age of the audience. These sessions were delivered across four days by five of our facilitators to over 1300 young people.

The results:

The sessions were well attended and lively. They gave participants confidence to engage in collaborative sessions with while thinking creatively and solving problems. Watch the success of the event here

More Laughology Case Studies

Nat West

Case study

We devised a bespoke programme of sessions designed to build participants’ emotional intelligence, using humour as a leadership mind-set.

HSBC

HSBC Case Study

HSBC wanted Laughology to complement its highly successful training and development programme with an engaging, science-based module addressing the subject of unconscious bias.

BNP Paribas

BNP Paribas Case Study

Laughology worked with BNP Paribas to develop a programme which taught the art of effective communication to participants on the bank’s fast-track management scheme

Severn Trent Water

Laughology devised a series of bespoke, immersive sessions with managers which helped them gain a greater understanding of resilience and increased emotional capital and engagement throughout the team.

O2

O2 Case Study

Telecoms provider O2 wanted to create a leadership-led culture where people could have ‘great conversations that matter, making every day better through personal experiences that count’.

Trafford

Trafford Case Study

Laughology was engaged at a time when the Trust was undergoing a transformation process and was attempting to save costs to invest more in its core mission.

Fujitsu

Fujitsu Case Study

International tech firm Fujitsu runs a two-year graduate programme designed to develop skills for work and future leaders. The cohort from this programme is drawn from all over Europe.