Inspired Teams

Art Making | 5 - 30 participants | 2 or 3 or more hrs

Each and every member of your team has untapped creative potential just waiting to emerge. Through group art activities, your team’s imagination will be stretched, communication styles explored, humor unleashed, and understanding enhanced.Art making can transform our thoughts into concrete form and allow our imagination to flow. It can sharpen our senses and teach us new ways to communicate complex ideas and insights.

Your team will gain access to their expressive selves and tap in to a new and dynamic way of communication, while stimulating their imagination and creativity. Each team member will practice new ways of bringing their ideas into focus when they explore their creative potential through art.Create an environment or an image. We work with you to understand & implement your desired outcome.
 

Drumming | 5 - 30 participants | 1 to 3 hrs

Drumming workshops are accessible to participants at any level of musical ability and therefore have the potential to neutralise hierarchy and encourage new group dynamics.

Drumming is a unique way to allow participants to simultaneously access their own rhythm and that of the group, promoting team co-operation and a sense of achievement through group collaboration. A group working in rhythm is a group working effectively together!

Bread / pizza / scone making | 10 - 30 participants | 4 hrs min

The warm complex aroma of a freshly baked loaf of bread can be an utterly tantalizing experience. Our breadmaking workshops will encourage your team to have fun, and our no-nonsense explanation will demystify the process thought by many to be the realm of only experienced artisans.

You can make and eat your pizzas and scones in one sitting if you simply can't resist. Your team will each get a take home pack of goodies. What are you waiting for?

Focusing | 5 - 20 participants | 2 or 3 hrs

Focusing  is a form of deep listening, used by a diversity of people around the world, from stock brokers in New York trying to find the leading edge to groups in Afghanistan dealing with trauma. It is fast becoming a popular process to enrich individuals and group process. By learning to listen with the whole body it takes mindfulness to the next level  enhancing self empathy, groundedness, self trust and authenticity. Focusing offers us a new way of being with ourselves… and each other.

Focusing takes us home to what we truly know and makes us feel good at the same time. Your team's experiences of self-compassion, self-care, inner trust, and authenticity are heightened.

Improvisation | 5 - 20 participants | 2 or 3 hrs

Improvisation is fun! It’s about freeing one’s creative spirit in a positive and safe environment.Entertainment and Corporate Training for companies of all sizes. Since 1996 we have been wowing audiences at conferences, award dinners, product launches, seminars, boardrooms, and celebrations with our exceptionally comic conference entertainment.

Additionally we offer a range of improvisation workshops designed to stimulate creativity, foster confidence, build teams and handle the unexpected.  Our workshops are fast-paced, invigorating and fun! Our highly experienced facilitators spark ingenuity, improve productivity and generate enthusiasm.

We aim to meet your needs and exceed your expectations.

Eurovision / Role Play / Video Production | 5 - 20 participants |
2 hrs or more

Our theatre, music, art and film-based workshops are led by professional actors, musicians, artists and filmmakers, and are designed to strengthen teamwork, communication skills, cooperation and creativity, while our role-play programs are designed to reinforce our clients’ learning and development objectives.

All our corporate theatre workshops are tailored to suit our clients’ themes, issues, products and teams.

Think, Thank, Thunk | 5 - 30 participants | 1 hr min

Using words (perhaps some principles of story telling and occasionally rhyme) to improve communications, develop new perspectives of situations and problem solving and encourage lateral thinking.

Areas which may be covered include: Ideas - What are they? How many ideas in a working day? Judgement - friend or foe? Perspectives - stepping outside the situation. Comic relief - you don't have to be serious to be responsible. Words - you are what you say. So now what?

Feldenkrais | 5 - 20 participants | 2 or 3 hrs

An introductory workshop to the Feldenkrais Method.
Our Feldenkrais practitioner guides you through a planned sequence of movement explorations. Attention is drawn to the process of each movement pattern. Through observing their movements, you learn easier ways of moving in everyday activities. Exploration of movement in these classes is designed to improve overall wellbeing.

Participating in this unique learning process can lead to better health and well-being, improved attention, thinking ability, emotional resilience, posture, movement coordination and balance, easier ways of doing tasks, easier breathing, reduced pain and control over muscular tension.

Yoga | 5 - 20 participants | 1 hr

We offer 2 types of yoga classes, both designed to ease you into your day at the Abbotsford Convent.

1. Centering the body and mind into a receptive relaxed state, through:
Asana – postures that allow the muscles and organs to be massaged and stretched and strengthened.
Pranayama – breathing practices develops fuller lung capacity, relaxes the nervous system and on a subtler level, moves prana, life force which enlivens the whole system.
Yoga Nidra – full body relaxation.  Progressive relaxation process that systematically soothes the nervous system and relaxes our whole physiology.

2. Achieving personal excellence through the breath
Quality and success in life are determined by the state of our mind. Under pressure, the mind often vacillates between past and future thoughts creating stress in our system. By learning to regulate our breath we can reduce the effects of stress, resulting in better performance in the workplace, improved concentration, increased efficiency and improved interpersonal relationships.

Aromatherapy Workshop | 5 - 20 participants | 1 or 2 hrs

Need help getting your team inspired, focused and energized? Allow the Aromatherapy at the Convent team to get you back on track. Fun team building workshops set in the tranquil Abbotsford Convent will allow you to: Provide a positive , healthy, harmonious workplace environment, Unwind, Relax, Rejuvenate, FOCUS.Using Essential oils for creativity, confidence and clarity, Create synergistic blends to optimize personal performance, wellbeing, productivity and decision making.

During the workshops you will learn simple relaxation and basic massage techniques, quick effective uses for Essential oils, such as foot baths, hand, neck and foot massage. Creams can be customized for problems such as insomnia, muscular aches and pains, and mental fatigue. Learn how to return the body to a state of balance and to harness its own healing process.

Reap the benefits of working in a healthy environment. We will look at ways of using the antibacterial and antiviral Essential Oils in the office to ward off winter flus, colds and bugs. Your team will return to work empowered, energized and focused. The benefits of a fun filled day will be ongoing.

Convent Tours | 5 - 30 participants | 1 hr

The Abbotsford Convent is steeped in history and interest. For over a century, the precinct housed a closed order of Good Shepherd Sisters, as well as the many hundreds of women they cared for.

Living memories have been collected from some of the women who were here; be they orphans, girls perceived to be in moral danger or those who attended the public school. The Sisters' experiences have also been recorded and we have compiled detailed historical documentation to build the comprehensive social history tour of the Abbotsford Convent.You can experience the precinct's unique history as you walk around its 6.8 hectares and enter some of its astounding buildings.

The guided tour provides an introduction to the development of the Abbotsford Convent precinct, from its use by the Kulin people, pastoral pioneers, the Good Shepherd Sisters and La Trobe University, to the present day arts, culture and education community. See the decayed grandeur of the dramatic interiors of the iconic buildings on site and explore the lifestyles that existed during the precinct's century of operation as a closed Convent.

Ayurveda Introduction | 5 - 20 participants | 2 or 3 hrs
 
Ayurveda: Ayu=life, Veda=science

An integrated approach in preventing and treating illness through lifestyle, diet and natural therapies. Ayurvedic treatment protocols are utilized to balance and maintain each individuals own unique constitution.Using diet, lifestyle, herbs, cleansing therapies, and home remedies to create and return your body to a state of balance.
Find out more about the following ayurvedic treatments Abhyanga therapeutic warm oil massage, Samvahan massage, Pindiswed ( Massage using heat and dry herbs) Shirodhara (Warm medicated oils are poured over the forehead, one of the most relaxing and healing therapies available) Heart dhara (A deeply nourishing treatment where a dam wall made of dough is placed over the heart region.  A warm decoction of medicated herbs and oil is placed in the dam and sponged repeatedly over the heart region.)

3MBS Radio Station Tours | 5 - 30 participants | 1 hr

Experience the thrill and excitement of live community radio. 3MBS is a fine music community radio station in Melbourne, based at the Abbotsford Convent.. Founded in 1975, 3MBS was the first FM station in Victoria and led the way for the introduction of community radio in Australia.

3MBS passionately supports fine music, especially Melbourne musicians and composers, and is the only locally-based classical music radio station in Victoria.

Lantern Making | 5 - 15 participants | 2 hrs into the evening

Using cane & paper to make lanterns with images created in a story writing session, your team's experience culminates in a lantern parade after dark.

Shadow Play | max 10 participants | whole day

Make shadow puppets & devise a play based on a story and characters made during the workshop. Design your own sets. Each participant will receive a DVD copy of your play.

The collaboration required throughout this workshop creates a strong team spirit and connected energy in the group.