Fully Booked – Visionary Masterclass in Practical Promotion and Profile Raising – A short communication and media series
Wednesday 19 March 2025
9:30 am to 11:30am
Zoom
Registration is now closed as this is fully booked!
If you would like to be added to the waiting list, please email Amy Pearman.
This is part of our Masterclass series sponsored by Fight for Sight.
Visionary is excited to announce a masterclass programme consisting of three communications and media sessions by Mairi Damer of Word Up Communications, which is exclusively for colleagues from Visionary member organisations of small and medium sizes:
- Wednesday 19 March 2025, 9.30am – 11.30am – Putting a plan in place – designing a communications action plan
- Wednesday 26 March 2025, 9.30am – 11.30am – Get Up, Stand Up: building skills for public speaking and presentations
- Wednesday 2 April 2025, 9.30am to 11.30am – Media training – preparing for interviews and talking to camera
Mairi will outline practical and achievable techniques to help participants to boost your organisation’s public profile. This programme is designed with sessions running consecutively. They will support small and medium sized organisations to promote themselves to supporters, funders, people of influence and locally too (maybe even nationally).
In this series of masterclasses, we will explore how you can:
- design, develop and implement an achievable but effective communications plan.
- build skills confidence for public speaking and presentations.
- make the most of the media (digital and mainstream).
- learn how to handle live and recorded interviews for the press and broadcasters.
During each session Mairi will encourage some new thinking about how participants can build skills and confidence to communicate coherently, confidently and with personality. Using practical exercises, the sessions will explore ways attendees can promote themselves and your organisation by setting appropriately ambitious objectives which can be delivered within existing capacity and budget constraints.
Programme Overview
Each masterclass will be delivered online and will last for 2 hours.
Due to the nature of this masterclass series, we ask participants to commit to attending all three sessions.
Session 1: Putting a plan in place – designing a communications action plan
Wednesday 19 March 2025, 9.30am – 11.30am
In this session we will explore ideas for designing a comms action plan which will help build your brand and raise your profile in a way which doesn’t cost too much and isn’t too difficult to implement. We will discuss:
- why bother with a comms plan?
- the critical importance of key messages
- setting goals which are appropriately ambitious and achievable
- deciding what format your plan should take
- what to include in your plan
- setting short, medium and long term tasks
- how to allocate appropriate budgets
- agreeing who is doing which tasks
Session 2: Get Up, Stand Up: building skills for public speaking and presentations
Wednesday 26 March 2025, 9.30am – 11.30am
In session 2 Mairi will introduce some practical skills and tips to help you improve public speaking and presentation skills to promote your organisation. This session will include a couple of simple exercises which you will present to the other trainees. In the session you will learn:
- the 3 Ps of preparation
- less is more – prioritising what to say
- adding personality and performance
- beginning with a bang – the WOW factor
- notes and scripts
- death by PowerPoint
- winding up
- handling a Q&A
Session 3: Media training – preparing for interviews and talking to camera
Wednesday 2 April 2025, 9.30am to 11.30am
In the final session of the series, you will learn some useful techniques to help you prepare and perform for interviews with the broadcast media. Mairi will also outline some top tips for speaking to camera for video content. During the session we will cover:
- an understanding of how the broadcast media actually works and what to expect.
- preparation techniques to help manage nerves and inhibition.
- tips on how to perform fluently, confidently and with personality.
- how to respond to a hard line of questioning.
- body language and posture.
Registration criteria
Applicants must fulfill all of the following criteria:
- Your organisation’s annual turnover for last year was less than £500,000; and
- you are able to commit to attending all three sessions.
We have 10 places available for Visionary members on a first come, first served basis. If we receive multiple applications from one organisation, we will offer a place to the first submission received.
Registration is now closed as this is fully booked, but you would like to be added to the waiting list, please email Amy Pearman.
Please note, this session will not be recorded.
About Mairi Damer
Mairi Damer is a former BBC Radio Scotland producer who brings 15 years’ worth of media experience to her Glasgow-based communications business. A one-woman anti-jargon warrior, she always aims to help her clients communicate clearly, confidently and coherently.
About Fight for Sight
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Fight for Sight logo
Imagine being told that you, or someone you love, is losing their sight. In that moment, two profound questions demand urgent answers:
- Can this be stopped?
- How will I live my life?
Currently, research into preventing and treating sight loss is chronically underfunded, receiving a mere 1.5% of publicly funded health research grants. People who are blind or vision impaired are three times more likely to experience loneliness and isolation than the general population.
We find and fund the brilliant minds and bright ideas that put change in sight. Our researchers are at the forefront, making breakthroughs and discoveries that will help us better understand, prevent, diagnose and treat eye disease. The partnerships we build and initiatives we support are changing life for blind and vision impaired people.
We are Fight for Sight and we won’t stop until we: Save Sight. Change Lives.
Visit: www.fightforsight.org.uk
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