Teaching creative workshops

This blog article is a brief overview of how you might start running creative workshops, how to reach the right audience, find venues and implement marketing strategies. Due to the complexity of this topic, we have suggested further reading at the end.

Why do you want to teach?

It can be difficult to pin point why you want to teach others - is it for a bit of extra income? Are you fed up of working alone? Do you feel you have a skill to share with the world?

Whatever it is, connecting with others can spread joy. It can make you a better creative, because you always learn from others, even when they are beginners. It can make you question what you are doing and why, bring you new motivation and inspire new work. 

Who will you teach? 

You have to be very clear on who your audience is and how long you will be engaging with them. 

Think about what you enjoy about your creative process and why you do it. We only teach adults because we like the mindful and relaxing process of making art and crafting. But you might love the chaos and energy of teaching children!  

What level of prior knowledge or skills are required from your audience? It might be that the skills you teach are very technical and therefore would appeal to intermediate or advanced learners. Or can they be simplified for a beginner group?

How will you teach? 

Once you have decided on your audience and level, the next step is to plan out the timing and content of the workshops.  

  1. Timetable 

 If you’d like to run set dates for group workshops, are they one-off or a series? Daytime or evening? Think about your personal circumstances and what will work with your schedule. 

We tend to do one-off workshops and alternate between daytime and evening to ensure we appeal to people who are retired or students, as well as people in full time work. Most our workshops are Monday to Friday but we’ll do weekends occasionally.  

  1. On request 

Sometimes it can be tricky to find set dates that suit both you and enough other people. We have an ‘on request’ option for private workshops where people can let us know what dates suit them. We offer this option for people who might be interested in specific themed workshops, e.g. for a birthday party, hen do or Christmas party. Or just want to come for the day with a friend to explore the techniques on offer. 

We also offer corporate workshops but this is a more complex topic we’ll cover another time. 

What will you teach? 

Content and length of time will be very specific to your craft but if you’re aiming at beginners, they’ll have an amount in mind that they’re willing to pay to try something new. People who are familiar with your craft are willing to pay more because they already know what they’ll be getting and will be keen to learn more advanced skills. 

If you’re not sure how long it will take to run the workshop, do a test workshop with a couple of friends. Get feedback on whether your instructions were clear and whether they had enough time. 

As we run beginner sessions, we try to stick to 2-3hrs for one-off introductory workshops. This is enough time to introduce the skills, have a bit of a play around, then people can produce a piece of work to take home. With this length of time, the cost can be kept reasonable. 

However, doing lots of introductory sessions requires finding new people each time. It is more efficient to add workshops with stages so that people can progress their skills upwards. This means you are marketing these workshops to existing customers who already know and like you.

Equipment 

Think about how much you need to invest in materials and equipment. To do this, you’ll need to decide what is the maximum number of people you can teach. Our ideal number is 10 so we can give everyone enough attention. However, for special occasions and corporate workshops, you’ll probably be asked to do higher numbers. 

We often take our workshops to other venues, which means packing it all up into two large suitcases. Think about how you’ll transport your stuff.

Facilities & venues  

It might sound obvious, but some crafts require lots of space or specialist equipment and are not easily taught without the right facilities.  

If you are teaching in your venue or somewhere else, you should have public liability insurance. This ensures you are covered if there are any accidents. 

There are a couple of options for venues:

1.Partner up with a venue – the benefit is that they might have a mailing list to help with marketing, but they’ll probably also want to charge you quite a hefty fee. For example, the National Trust will take 50% of your ticket price!

2. Hire a venue – you’ll need to find a venue to hire (e.g. £30-50 an hour in London) and do all the marketing yourself which is hard work unless you already have a good mailing list. In addition, there is the increased pressure for a certain number of bookings in order to turn a profit.

If you’re lucky, there may be a community space you can use free of charge. We have found a couple of bars, hotels and restaurants that are happy just to get more people in. But beware, free venues can be less than ideal. In one, the lighting was terrible and in another the room was incredibly hot and noisy. In both these cases, we decided it wasn’t worth returning as it compromised the workshop experience.

Make sure to ask the right questions and ideally have a look around first. Does the venue provide tables and chairs? Do you need a sink/ water supply?  How will people get there via public transport or car?

3. Use your own studio or home space. This is ideal if it is big enough, and it can be in your own home if you’re comfortable with that. You may need to check with your home insurance if you are running workshops from home.

4. Travel to a host venue. You may be asked to run a workshop at a specific place, such as an office. In this situation, the host will be paying you for your time and you won’t be paying for the venue.

Marketing 

There are many free and low cost ways of marketing your workshop but they are hard work! 

  • Flyers in local cafes. (You might be nervous about asking but give it a go!)  
  • Posters on community boards outside churches, in supermarkets and local libraries. 
  • Networking in person in local business groups or special interest groups. 
  • Mailing lists are one of the best ways to reach people. Sign people up at local events or via your website. Offer them a booking discount. 
  • Online platforms like Facebook local groups, Nextdoor, and local news websites. Sometimes local councils have an events page.
  • Approaching other art and local organisations to mention you in their email newsletter to their mailing list. 
  • Social media – you need to get on board with it, even if you find it tricky. Self-promotion is part of running workshops. You are the public face! 
  • If you have a decent budget then explore an advert in a local magazine. Check the circulation and geographic area before committing. 
  • Lastly, don’t forget about PR. This is when there is an article in the media about you which you didn’t pay for. It is part of the editorial content. Write about yourself and send it to the editorial assistant. Try local magazines first.

How do you know which one is working the best? You can either ask people where they heard about you or track discount codes that were issued in specific locations only.

Bookings 

We try to direct people to our own website because we keep more of the ticket price. We offer 10% discounts such as ‘early bird’ and ‘bring a friend’ when people are on our mailing list.  

There are specific platforms designed to handle creative workshop bookings which charge you a fee when someone buys a ticket. This means that you don’t need to have your own website and don’t pay up front. Some of the platforms we have used include Class Bento, Craft Courses and Ticket Tailor. Fees are in the range of 15-18% but these platforms will do some marketing for you such as Google ads. 

Make sure you decide the minimum number of people needed for your workshop to go ahead. You can decide if you want to provide full, partial or no refunds for cancellations made within a specific time frame. You can also decide how far in advance bookings will close (e.g. 48hrs). 

We have had some no-shows and very last minute cancellations. It is a balance between being flexible to appeal to customers but also ensuring you don’t lose money. 

 

Reviews 

Getting reviews for your workshops will move them higher up the search results within the booking platforms. The platform automatically sends out a link after the workshops.  

Google reviews are also valuable because then you can rank higher on google searches. To get Google reviews, you need to have a Google business page.

Costs & Profit 

Think about all these costs when calculating the profitability of your workshop: 

Teaching time, travel time, parking/ transport, material costs, venue costs, booking processing fees, marketing. 

The calculation:

(Ticket price – costs)/ ticket price = Profit margin (what you get to keep)

In this example below, on a £50 ticket with £20 costs, the profit margin is 0.6 or 60%. You should not go below 50%. The profit margin allows you to cover fixed overheads of running your business and to invest in its growth.

(50 – 20)/50 =  0.6 x 100 = 60% 

Further reading 

We recommend the information and training provided by The Design Trust. A lot of topics are also covered in the book  'Teaching Creative Workshops' by Patricia van den Akker (director of the Design Trust)

 

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