More About TWR
Together We Rise
is a team development experience tailor-made to fit your needs, based around breadmaking with a well-known organic baker and highly experienced corporate team facilitators.
Strengthening
Every successful business team faces increasing demands on its time, skills and stamina. Instead of taking them up mountains or relying on away-days, the Together We Rise process strengthens them to meet these demands by using breadmaking and business-focussed action learning.
Creativity
Time, patience, dexterity and cooperation are deployed to make artisan breads and yeasted pastries in the wood-fired oven. The process is fun, physically satisfying and likely to challenge stereotypes of how people perform in groups. From this experience we crystallize participants' emerging awareness of how each can enhance their team's contribution to the business. Our focus is more on the creative and positive than on the problems as, in our experience, it is more efficient to have teams build on their strengths than dwell on their weaknesses.
Willingness
There is plenty of "spray and pray" training around. Together We Rise is not about coercion, nor about sending your team on an off-the-peg course that may well raise their hackles. It is about building the course around them and the demands of your business, and then supporting them willingly to implement their team decisions back at work.
The Recipe
- We visit you and collect the data we need from you and your team for us to design your programme
- We design and deliver the programme over 1-3 days at The Village Bakery in Cumbria
- We offer further coaching, both in person and online to manage the challenges of implementing what you have agreed together. This ensures that what has been gained from the programme can be harnessed and embedded into daily practice.
Result: A strong, creative and willing team
Our Team
The Baker
Andrew Whitley worked as a producer for the BBC Russian Service in London before moving to Cumbria in 1976 in search of a more self-reliant life. Described by Derek Cooper of The Food Programme as "one of the best and most uncompromising bakers in Britain", Andrew is a leader in the revival of artisan baking and a committed advocate of organic food production. His belief that health abounds in natural ingredients transformed with time, care and a little humility is communicated in his popular Bread Matters baking courses, described by one participant as 'a life-enhancing experience'.
The Facilitators
Fiona Reed is a management consultant and coach with experience in the business, voluntary and public sectors. For over 20 years she has been designing and delivering development programmes focussing on improving individual and team performance. Combining enthusiasm and energy with a professional and structured approach, she brings finely tuned facilitation skills. Having lived and worked on an organic market garden, she has a passion for the vision developed by Andrew into The Village Bakery and shared by all the team. Now based in the small village of Ousby, near Penrith, she runs a busy coaching practice.
Click here for more information on Fiona Reed
Tim Sims, from Team Support & Training, has facilitated teams, both management and operational, in large company manufacturing, human resources, and corporate communication. He also works with public and voluntary sector teams from organisations that include colleges and black community empowerment networks. His interest is in innovative work with teams, delivering practical results. Tim and Fiona have worked together for over 14 years and have trained together in Gestalt process.
The Venue
The main component of Together We Rise is delivered at The Village Bakery in Melmerby, Cumbria.
Melmerby is a delightful village at the foot of the Pennines, between Penrith & Alston on the A686, which was named by the AA as one of the top 10 drives in the world! There are railway stations at Langwathby (Settle-Carlisle line) and Penrith (West Coast line, 4 hours from London Euston).
Programmes take place in the bakery and a conference room which has all the usual facilities with the added advantage of superb organic food and drink from the Restaurant.
There are opportunities on hand for walks in the unspoilt Eden Valley or the rugged and empty North Pennines. The Lake District is twenty-five minutes away. The whole atmosphere of the Bakery, Restaurant and adjacent 5 -acre organic smallholding is relaxed yet purposeful and commends itself especially to organisations for whom sustainability (of both planet and people) is a significant aspiration.
Accommodation is arranged in friendly village b&bs or in comfortable hotels not far away.
Further Information
In the first instance please contact:
Andrew Whitley
e-mail: andrew@breadmatters.com
Tel: 01768 881899
