The Background
One of the most exciting projects we worked on last year happened at the end of November, 2019. We were approached by BBC Studios to talk about a corporate event they were having with the producers of the international versions of The Great Bake Off (not just GBBO but there’s The Great Bake Off’s in so many countries including Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Ukraine, Turkey, Mexico, Brazil, Thailand, Australia…the list goes on.) They were looking for a fun, engaging and creative activity to include in a 2 day conference being hosted at BBC Television Centre in London.
The Idea – Different, quirky and team-based
We worked with the event management team to develop their concept. They were looking for a fun, team-building activity with a competitive element that was on-theme, and also was different to what they had done before. They wanted to offer the delegates something light-hearted, with a baking association that was both engaging, created something impressive and was not overly complicated or messy! It needed to be something that could be brought to them at their head office and then cleared away with ease.
The Concept – Creative and engaging
After discussing a few different ideas, we progressed with creating a large collage made of individual biscuits that would be decorated by each team, and then put together to make a final image. The image would be divided into 50 square – each with a small part of the bigger picture on. Teams would be given random squares to copy in icing, and then we wold slot these into the larger biscuit collage.
The Main Event
We set up worktables (just like in the big white tent!) Each team was supplied with ‘blank canvas’ iced biscuits, icing bags with different colours of icing in, some edible paper, edible ink felt pens, and 6 random picture squares to reproduce in icing.
The delegates were told which team they were in and joined their work stations. And then the icing began!
As each iced square was completed, it was brought to the front and included into the larger picture collage on a big square frame. Each team also iced a final biscuit with their team name on which was added at the end of the activity.
The Results – Fun, enjoyable, engaging team event
As each biscuit was completed, it was wonderful to see the final image being put together. As individual squares, the decorators could not tell what the final image was, and so had to reproduce the square they had as best they could. Despite aiming for a big reveal at the end, the excitement as each biscuit got slotted into place was infectious as the bigger picture started to come together. And as you can see…they did pretty well!
In terms of delivering against the original objectives, the delegates enjoyed the creativity and ‘hands on’ aspects of this workshop, and really enjoyed the competitive element! As promised, the event was different, quirky, on-theme and also involved everyone. We were delighted to be thanked by many of the participants who said how much they enjoyed icing the biscuits (and in fact taking extra biscuits to make a few more!)
The Feedback
“Thanks for all of your hard work on the biscuit activity last week. It was a big success and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves. It was a great way to break up the afternoon and your creative ideas and enthusiasm helped us to achieve a unique activity….the biscuits were delicious too!”
Want to find out more?
If you have a team or client event coming up, and would like to talk through unique and creative ideas with us, please just get in touch to see what we can do for you!