Fashion Works: Creative Team Building at Ettington Chase, Warwickshire

If you've been given the task of arranging your company's next team building event, but your colleagues are more Prada than paintballing, then look no further than the fabulous Fashion Works!

In this fantastic and creative team building event, you'll get the chance to become fashionistas for the day, designing and making next year's hottest 'look' before an amazing Catwalk Finale. Each team forms a design house and there are roles for everyone - from models to choreographers and seamstresses to photographers, it's all hands on deck to get the final production ready.

A plethora of materials is supplied, so everyone can let their imagination run riot in order to come up with the most impressive, larger-than-life designs they can think of. And that they do - you may never have known that your favourite colleague has always dreamt of dressing up as a glam-rock version of Cinderella, but after this team building event, you will!

Our recent Fashion Works team build at Ettington Chase in Warwick was just as incredible as any other - the teams' feet barely touched the ground as they raced around the hotel and grounds getting as many shots as possible for their official photo shoot, the results of which were then displayed on a giant screen for everyone to enjoy.

When the time was up, the teams were raring to go for their Catwalk Finale - and they didn't disappoint. Everyone was in stitches, whilst also being highly impressed with the incredible outfits that had been produced. The day ended on a high as the winning design house was announced and the champagne corks popped - next stop, Milan!

If you're interested in one of our awesome creative team building events, visit our website or call 0845 006 06 06 to speak to our fabulous sales team.

Indoor Team Building at it's Best: The Enigma Challenge

The Brief:

Create an innovative, animated team building event that boosts motivation and encourages participants to work together. It must have plenty of challenges, with something to suit everyone, whether they are a brainteaser-loving whiz-kid, an aspiring creative, or an active ball of energy.

Oh, and just one more thing: it must be completely winter-proof, allowing our clients to inject excitement and fun into their working day without leaving the warm comfort of the conference room.

The Solution?

The awesome Enigma Challenge!

Boasting over 100 different and varied challenges within one unique event, the Enigma Challenge is a race against time as teams frantically complete as much possible before our Giant Countdown Clock runs out!

Individual challenges are split into four categories, which enables participants to delegate and play to their team member's strengths. There's a wealth of tasks to suit every taste - are you feeling creative? Compose a 'replica' Mona Lisa to earn yourself 40 points! Enjoy the Sunday crossword? Get stuck into the Brainteaser category to solve our fiendish  puzzles. Maybe you're feeling energetic - try capturing a photo of your entire team jumping in the air!  Or if you're simply great at sniffing out answers, head to the Aroma area to try and decipher our mystery scents.

You'll be having too much fun to realise it at the time, but the Enigma Challenge carries huge potential benefits for your working relationships. Because everyone - no matter their interests or strengths - can play a valuable part in getting their team to victory, every participant will come away with a sense of achievement and value. You'll also see sides to your colleagues you never knew existed, which breaks the ice and provides office banter material for years to come.

With our dynamic scoring system, we are able to break down your scores into categories - so as well as there being one overall winning team, you'll also get feedback on who completed the most challenges, which groups worked best together, the team that was the most creative or observant, and the champions of puzzles and brainteasers. As well as allowing victories to more than one team, this is also a great way of assessing how people think and work - many of our clients take this feedback and use it to implement changes in how they operate as a team.

As many of the challenges involve you taking photographic proof of success, you'll end up with a brilliant collection of hilarious team photos to decorate your office with, allowing you to re-live the day to your heart's content!

If you'd like to find out more about this brilliant event, call 0845 006 06 06 for a chat.

The Guernica of the Team Building World!

An enquiry comes in from one of our top clients to provide a creative team build for a group of 150 in a meeting room in Northampton which accentuates the need for communication, dedication and the whole group working towards one spectacular achievement. "OK, leave it to us!" we said. This will require creating a painting so big only Picasso could rival it we thought! Pablo Picasso was one of the World's greatest painters, and one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, with some of his most famous works including Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Guernica. But these paintings are not only an outstanding expression of his thoughts, they are on a particularly grand scale! Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which portrays five nude prostitutes from a brothel in Barcelona, stands 244cm tall and 233cm wide and is considered to be central to the development of cubism and modern art.

However, Guernica is a dark and moving representation of the terror and destruction of the German and Italian bombing, and the ultimate artistic anti-war symbol if ever I have seen one. The painting measures an outstanding 349cm high and 776cm wide! I have been lucky enough to view it in all its splendour and glory at Museo Reina Sofia, and it was truly magnificent.

So, what's this got to do with team building? Well, we have had years of experience of running successful team building days for our clients, finding them the best venue for their away day, and creating bespoke events, but to create a masterpiece usually only Pablo Picasso could be proud of is something that requires team work at its best.

Having commissioned a local artist, Kelly Penfold, to paint us our own 'Picasso style' work of art, we now set ahead to produce an 18 team event and scale it up to a 250cm high and 750cm wide masterpiece. Look out Picasso!

CCC Events have provided a wide range of bespoke Work of Art events for clients, and have commissioned artists to design branded images as well as abstract or modern art, but we don't often we get asked to provide a 750cm wide masterpiece (you require a pretty big meeting room for these!) The teams on the day had 75 canvasses distributed between them, and instructions on what their challenge was. But they had no idea what the complete image would be. Considering it was the hottest day of the year so far the Northampton Marriott staff were helpful in topping up cold water stations to keep our budding artists refreshed and cool. But the hard work paid off and the delegates couldn't believe their eyes when we did the big reveal at the end of a truly successful afternoon. And here is the masterpiece itself:

The client said:

"...feedback from all participants was extremely positive and it certainly helped the communication and networking theme around which our day was centred. While some of us are less artistic than others, cue some of the examples in the warm up exercise, it was a fantastic event which brought together many teams who work in different locations and never get to see or meet each other. It was arranged so seamlessly that it even managed to make me look good!"

For more information on our bespoke team building events, free venue finding service and creative options contact 0845 006 06 06 or visit our website.

What a Work of Art!

As Event Managers at CCC Events we're trained to run a broad range of team building days from Treasure Hunts, Murder Mysteries  and outdoor activities, to Chocolate Workshops and cooking master classes. The events are fantastic fun and designed to get colleagues working well together, communicating and competing for a winning prize! However one of our most popular events, the Work of Art, not only gets the delegates to work wonderfully in their teams, but the whole group is working towards the same goal, to produce a huge and colourful multi canvass masterpiece!

It was a beautiful day in London when CCC Event Managers Katrina Shoesmith and Kate Packham travelled to the city to run the Work of Art for Ernst & Young at their offices. After spending the morning in meetings, our clients were delighted to come back from lunch to find we had transformed their offices into an Art studio. It looked fantastic, and the view of Big Ben and the London Eye out of the windows on the 11th floor was just breathtaking!

We all take pride in helping companies enjoy good team building days, but there's nothing that compares with the sense of achievement the teams get when we do The Big Reveal at the end of the day. This was one of the best paintings I've seen yet though. The teams worked so well together, communicating to get all the joining canvasses with matching colours and sharing the shades of paint with each other. You can tell that a group has worked well together when the end result is so perfect. Well done Ernst & Young!

Kelly Edwards at Ernst & Young was thrilled:

"Our entire team enjoyed the the work of art event - it was a nice surprise to see the final painting and how well we all worked together to achieve the wonderful end result. I have been on quite a few team building days but none have even compared to this one. I would highly recommend Work of Art for a team building day to anyone. I look forward to planning our next Strategy day with CCC Events!"

For more information about our Work of Art team building day, and many other team building solutions call our sales team on 08450 06 06 06 or visit our website

Behind The Scenes - The Apprentices!

Another day, another great team building event! At the Grand Hotel, Brighton, we were right on our own doorstep for The Apprentices!

Mike Horner, the event manager on the day, said "Nick's entrance is great - he storms into the conference room shouting into his phone, switching back and forth between English and Russian, before finally hanging up and seeing the guests for the first time and fixing them with his trademark steely glare!"

Learn more about our Apprentices event here, or get in touch for more information.

Behind The Scenes

Operations Director Steve Scott gets in the spirit of the role as he joins in yesterday's The Apprentices event. "I'm a lovely guy, really, I am", he insists. "But there's something really enjoyable about playing a shouting tycoon! It's all in good fun, and the clients had a great time."

Event Manager Kate Packham said "Steve always brings an element of comical grumpiness to the role! Not at all like he is around the office, of course!"

Well indeed.

We invite you to offer a comment of your own. Steve - an imposing, fear-inducing tycoon? Or a loveable, mild mannered and misunderstood business magnate?

Contact us to learn more about our top team building events, or head into our main site for more great event ideas!