To request further information on any of the training courses listed below, please click the individual course titles.

Lunch Time Sessions Training Courses

1½ hour creative idea sessions for as many people as you can fit in the room!

We can tailor a training session to your specific brief, or we can do any of the topics listed below.

Features Training

44 Ways to do a Feature

Wendy Bristow looks at how participants can make the most of trends in magazine features, and offers a toolbox of feature formats to choose from when under pressure. The 44 different approaches present an abundance of ideas for publications and help introduce more variety, novelty and lateral thinking.

Turning the Miles into Inches - Travel Writing Made Easy

Susan Marling reveals the secrets of successful travel writing - from going on the press trip to gathering the information, avoiding the cliché and getting an angle.

20 Ways to Save a Feature

Does your heart sink when freelance copy arrives? Do your features team never quite write what you were expecting? Well, no more! Liz Nice reveals 20 editing tricks for transforming tragic features. Whatever the disaster, it can be salvaged - in fact, often, the rescue mission can even be fun!

11 Ways to Stronger, Better Features - By Tuesday

It's easy to get into a features rut. All the ideas start to sound the same and you begin to bore even yourselves, let alone the reader. Wendy Bristow's talk is packed full of ideas for livening up the features process. It is mainly about ideas - how to have better ones, how to sharpen the ones you have - rather than structure or style. It will help you make sure you're pooling all your resources and maximising creativity to make the very most of the meatiest part of your magazine.

Covers Training

15 Secrets of the Best Covers Ever

Can we ever REALLY know what makes a cover fly off the shelves? It is one of the most mystical arts in magazines but, while there are obviously no easy answers, we can learn so much from where others have succeeded - and perhaps even more from where they have failed. Liz Nice reveals the secrets of the covers that succeeded beyond their editors' wildest dreams, the covers that they hope to never see again and perhaps most intriguingly of all, the covers they still believe should have worked, but didn't!

News and Investigations Training

Investigative Journalism - The Thrill of the Chase

Peter Gillman talks about the stories he has brought in, from the quest for the killer of rock star Kirsty MacColl to the secret Scottish childhood of Ian Brady. He points out the key lessons of investigations: get out of the office, go and see for yourself, never take no for the first answer, develop your contacts and networks, and play a long game.

News in Monthlies - An Oxymoron or a Lost Opportunity?

Richard Sharpe analyses the winners and losers in the monthly news game and suggests possible approaches to help news pages live up to their label.

Law Training

The Top 12 Libel Mistakes (and how to avoid them)

If you don't know about libel you increase the risk of expensive law suits. Wendy Bristow presents an entertaining look at the 12 classic mistakes people make including via photographs, features and reviews.

Digital - New Media Training

Understanding Digital Media

Ever wondered what everyone's talking about, but are too afraid to ask? This course session will demystify all-things-online and allow you to join in the conversation. We'll look at why digital media is top of the agenda and here to stay; and explain all that web-speak - blogs and forums, CMS, pod and vodcasting, SEO, Web 2.0 and more.

Creativity and Planning Training

Why Planning Ahead Could Change Your Life

Because journalism is a deadline-oriented business, we tend not to plan ahead. But the consequences can be increased chaos and decreased creativity. Wendy Bristow presents easy, quick ways to plan ahead, individually and team-wise, and explains how planning produces a better quality publication than skimming along on the seat of your pants.

5 Things that Kill Creativity - and 5 Things that Revive It

Wendy Bristow presents how to avoid and/or repair the former and incorporate the latter, looking at:

Interviewing Training

Your Job on the Line: Getting the Very Best from Telephone Interviews

With a stubborn actor playing the heart-sink interviewee, Susan Marling presents a quickfire and fun look at how to get something out of Mr Monosyllable, Miss Shy, Sir Self-Promo, Ms Press Release...

Handling the Media Training

Yes, it's Live! - 10 Steps to Becoming a Dream Interview Guest

Susan Marling reveals the secrets of appearing on camera and includes essential prep, staying calm, controlled and on message, not being a rabbit in the headlights, rescuing the situation and "Do I Sound Bad, or What?"

Grammar Training

English Grammar - Does it Matter?

Leni Gillman presents an amusing and enlightening run-through of some of the hottest topics concerning the way we write - and speak - our rich and diverse language.

• Corruscating, reticent, disinterested - just three examples of words that are widely misused. What, if anything, should we do?
• Prepositions, from bored of to meet with - right, wrong, unnecessary?
• Speech punctuation - sorting out the mess
• Direct and indirect speech - does anyone still know the rules?
• Text-speak - does it have a place?

Apostrophes, commas, homonyms, plus some classic proof-reading errors from the national press. All these and more in 90 minutes which will make the rules of English fun again.

Barry McIlheney Training Sessions

The 10 Big Trends in Magazines Right Now

A provocative look at the external and internal forces shaping magazine publishing today and tomorrow. Designed to get creative teams thinking, Barry covers such areas as the death of the critic, the war of the sexes, and the rise and rise of the weeklies.

10 Things You Must Know About Front Covers

Designed for magazine editors, art directors, and their teams, Barry looks back at great magazine front covers and great front cover disasters and tries to ensure that in future there will be more of the former and a whole lot less of the latter.

How I Launched Zoo Weekly

A stimulating and tongue-in-cheek account of how a lively conversation down the pub one night ended up 18 months later as the biggest revolution on the newsstand in years. With unique insights into the pre-launch development process on Zoo Weekly, and informative analysis of the successful roll-out launches in Australia and South Africa.

Desert Island Magazines

How your favourite magazine and your all-time creative icon can help you scale new heights at work. An interactive training session for anyone remotely interested in the creative process.