4 reasons to do arts and crafts for a corporate or team building event

[This article was written by Brooke Chaplan.]

Infusing creative activities into your corporate and team-building events is a thought that might not have crossed your mind in the past. While you may have some reservations, especially if you aren’t an artistic individual, consider the benefits associated with using arts and crafts for these purposes.

Release of tension and stress

At the end of a long day, you might have found yourself doodling some images, writing down your thoughts and frustrations into a journal, or even folding old memos into paper airplanes. For many people, engaging in the arts can help to release tension and stress. When your business is a busy one filled with many tasks throughout the day, engaging in arts and crafts can help employees to feel more relaxed. As a result, you can end up with more productive meetings. Giving your employees a creative outlet will help stir things up and exercise their brains so they are more able to come up with creative solutions to problems.

Emphasis on collaboration

Another benefit of creative corporate workshops is that you can develop activities that require your employees to work together. For example, as a team-building exercise, members could create customized wood signs for their office or team, or work together on needle felting projects. Your employees likely have worked together before in the past on different projects. However, bringing in arts and crafts asks them to do so in a new way, which can lead to the generation of novel ideas and the building of stronger relationships. It can also help to smooth out tensions that may exist between individual members on the team by showing everyone’s more human and creative side.

Development of creative solutions

While having a craft-focused corporate event or team building workshop might be out of your budget for right now, there are many smaller ways to implement creative fun into your workplace. You could incorporate arts and crafts as an icebreaker for the next corporate or team meeting. Instead of focusing the entire meeting on the creative project, you can simply use the project to get everyone engaged and relaxed, then move into the main topic of discussion. What you may find is that after engaging in a craft project, your employees have better solutions to bring to the table now that their creative juices have been activated. Furthermore, by acting as an icebreaker, the creative project will also have lowered your employees’ mental walls, which will encourage them to speak up and engage.

Casual atmosphere

Employees often feel intimidated by their bosses to different degrees. Even when you feel as though you have a close bond with your team members, they may view you in a rather formal way. In other words, they might not feel as though you are approachable. Bringing creative activities into the meeting can help your employees to see you in a new light. After this creative session, you may find that they are more willing to share both their concerns and their ideas with you.

A team-building or corporate event is the perfect opportunity to bring in lively new activities. When you opt for arts and crafts, you can inspire a more positive environment at your place of work.

Author Bio:

Brooke Chaplan is a freelance writer and blogger. She lives and works out of her home in Los Lunas, New Mexico. She loves the outdoors and spends most of her time hiking, biking, and gardening. For more information, contact Brooke via Facebook at facebook.com/brooke.chaplan or Twitter @BrookeChaplan