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New Book Alert! Teaching Creative Workshops In Person and Online, by Patricia van den Akker

New book alert! We’re excited to be stocking Teaching Creative Workshops In Person and Online by Patricia van den Akker, a must read book, that supports makers, artists, and creatives to develop quality workshops, as part of their creative practise.

 

Whether you want to deliver, or are already delivering workshops, this excellent book is both an essential practical tool and an inspirational guide, featuring everything from checklists to thought provoking case studies from successful creative workshop tutors. And better still it includes some familiar faces from the lampshade making world!

 

Find out more in today’s blog post about Teaching Creative Workshops In Person and Online and how this book can support your business.

 





About the Book

Divided into 3 clear parts Teaching Creative Workshops In Person and Online, takes you through an everything you need to know to teach creative skills and develop both short, medium and longer term creative training, as well as the business skills to make your teaching a sucess.

 

Part 1: Why, what, who, how and where to teach?

In Part 1 you'll find the questions you need to ask yourself when setting up workshops, courses and training, for example, why teach, reflecting on the drive behind sharing your skill with others, who do you want to teach and what your student may want. The student profiles, ranging from those learning for fun, to corporate clients give useful insights into how you can develop the right kind of teaching environment to serve each audience. In addition, we liked how Patricia begins the journey of creating a teaching/lesson plan through this part of the book, building the detail with each question asked.



The section on ‘Common teaching methods for in-person and online training’, we feel is particularly useful for reflecting on the best ways of conveying each stage of the process of teaching, using different teaching mediums. We also liked the ‘Get ready to deliver your in-person training’ section, which is an ‘up to the day’ checklist, to help you stay on track before, and throughout, your teaching session, which even highlights elements of your teaching style, such as using your voice and monitoring the energy in the room, offering helpful tips for the most seasoned of tutors.



Focus on Online Teaching

With an increase of online teaching since Covid – the book quoted the online education market being projected to reach $185 Billion in 2024 - for some this is still a very new way of teaching. The ‘Teaching Online’ section offers an in depth guide to the different formats, the challenges these may present for both students and tutors and the equipment needed for teaching online, giving you the confidence to try this accessible, and potentially worldwide, teaching style.

 

Part 2: Making money and marketing

Focussed on the business behind teaching creative skills, Part 2 includes budgeting, costing and pricing strategies for creative teaching and ensuring it's profitability. As well as these important financial factors are fundamental marketing concepts for your workshops, courses or training, such as who are you ideal students, what make your standout and how to turn interest into bookings. In this section, it was great to see Dannells customer, Alison Bick credited with making her lampshade making workshops giftable, as a unique marketing tool.

 


Website and branding

For many creatives, a website is the way of attracting and converting potential students into bookings, and Patricia takes us back to basics sharing her advice on branding, colours, fonts and what to consider when setting up training pages. Additionally, she shares her advice on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), email marketing and social media, as essential methods of attracting and maintaining customer interest, covering not only the creative aspects, but the legalities, such as GDPR and data storage, too.


Part 3: Taking your teaching to the next level

Finally, Part 3, the shortest chapter in the book, focusses on you where you want to as a maker and how you can achieve this, and we liked how this acknowledged the continual growth of creative businesses and importantly your role as the teacher!


While we have covered just our highlights, Teaching Creative Workshops In Person and Online is an essential tool and inspiring read, and we would highly recommend this to anyone looking to expand their creative work and share their skills and knowledge in the form of workshops, courses or training.



About the Author

Patricia van den Akker is an award-winning creative business adviser, trainer, and coach with more than 25 years of experience empowering designers, makers, and creative entrepreneurs. As Director of The Design Trust - an acclaimed online business school - she is dedicated to helping creatives build thriving, purpose-driven businesses.


Renowned for her down-to-earth, practical, and insightful approach, Patricia brings clarity and confidence to the often-challenging world of creative entrepreneurship. She believes that building a business or career as a creative is one of the most rewarding - and creative - challenges there is.

 

 


Our Favourite Part

As in our Meet the Maker interviews, we love a peek behind the scenes and the maker case studies featured throughout the book are inspiring insights into how other makers, artists and creatives have developed and grown the teaching side of their business, highlighting what they have learnt along the way. The range of creative practises featured cover everything from gold leaf reverse glass gilding - David A. Smith, to Embroidery and Map quilts - Ekta Kaul (see below), and Japanese Textiles (Rob Romor).



Featured Dannells Lampshade Makers


Turning her talents for creating bold, colourful and nature inspired graphic designs into a range of modern homewares, including her best-selling lampshades, Alison Bick is a committed member of the Dannells Facebook Lampshade Making Group and has expanded her successful creative business by tutoring lampshade making workshops.  

 

In Teaching Creative Workshops In Person and Online, Alison is mentioned for her approach to marketing her lampshade making workshops, by highlighting her courses as being giftable, and her creation of YouTube tutorial videos to accompany her courses!

Rob Jones, founder of Romor Designs, started to learn the Japanese art of Shibori to indulge his creative side. He now specialises in this, and many other traditional Japanese crafts creating beautiful one-of-a-kind accessories and homewares, including lampshades.


Sharing his passion, skills and knowledge he teaches others the ancient arts of shibori dying, katagami stencilling and sashiko and kogin embroidery, both in person and online classes. Read in his Case Study, how he adapted his in-person teaching to teach online during Covid.




Dannells Workshop Packs and Resources

Teaching creative workshops has never been easier thanks to Dannells Workshop Packs. Specially designed for simplicity and convenience, these packs support both workshop tutors and participants - whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out.


In addition to being available in a wide range of lampshade sizes, we’ve expanded our range to include Workshop Packs based on our popular Needcraft Creative Kits. These include Lanterns, Clocks, Waste Bins, and Textile Wall Art Kits, all designed to make group making sessions creative and enjoyable, with a functional and beautiful end product!.


Curious about what’s inside a Workshop Pack? We break it all down in our blog post: Top 5 Creative Workshop Packs for Group Making.


To further support your teaching, we also provide a suite of free resources:


With everything from materials to marketing support, we hope our Workshop Kits and resources will help you to develop an important secondary income stream for your business, alongside developing skills as a workshop tutor.




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