About VisualFunk
Visualfunk Overview
Visualfunk is a company that has a passion for enabling people to unlock the creative potential to achieve personal, team and organisational growth. Visualfunk does this through:
- Corporate training programs
- Facilitation
- Creative team building experiences
- Business simulations
- Conference events
- Conference MC’ing
- Keynotes
As a company we operate through our values of:
- Live Creatively
- Be Curious
- Add Value
- Keep it Real
Visualfunk history
Visualfunk was started by director Simon Banks in England in 2003. With a long break in between whilst seeing as much of the world as possible, Simon established Visualfunk in Australia in late 2007. Given his diverse background, the formation of Visualfunk came as a natural progression. Simon combined a career as an account manager and facilitator with one of the United Kingdoms leading training and development companies, Oxygen Learning with a career as a professional artist. In this creative capacity, Simon has exhibited both in Australia and Europe, lectured at the National Gallery of England and developed programs for institutions such as The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.
Simon says, “In my role as a facilitator, I came across so many programs delivered by different companies labeled as ‘team building’. However, the facilitators often had no understanding of the realities of corporate life or how to engage the hearts and minds of delegates and thus the programs often felt ‘flat’. This brings little or no benefit to the building of a great team culture. At the same time I heard more and more leaders talking about wanting their workforce to be more creative but having no idea of how to make it happen.”
“I really believe that everyone has amazing creative potential. I also believe to teach creativity you have to practice creativity. My background has given me the ability to enable people to tap into that creativity to achieve results. This ensures that it is done in such a way that it makes an impact in the in a corporate environment”
Visualfunk Creativity Philosophy
Everyone is creative. It is something that everyone was born with. Up to the age of 9 or 10 we all loved to create and our art, school work and play was filled with colour and vitality. However, along the way things changed. Negativity, schooling, left brain activities and the ‘correct’ way of doing things took over. Most of us left our amazing creative potential far behind. But, if you look closely, it’s still there, just waiting to come out. Its there when you imagine something, in the way you choose an outfit or even the way you manage your time
Creativity is a business tool! It can have a positive influence on everything an organisation does. It drives competitive advantage through innovation and makes an organisation a dynamic leader in their field, rather than a follower. However, many organisations have no idea of how to encourage creativity and make a culture of innovation a reality.
So what is team building?
Spending a day together out of the office does not mean you are necessarily building teamwork. In fact, a team building experience that is unenjoyable and poorly delivered can be a destructive influence on teamwork.
I prefer to break the term down and refer to it as ‘team development‘. How is the day going to develop a more successful team? A highly motivated team? A happy, productive or more creative team?
When planning a team development day there are some important things to ask:
What is the current teamwork situation in the workplace with your team?
What would you like the teamwork situation to be?
Do you want the team development day to be all fun, a full-blown training program or a great mix of fun and learning?
How will you measure the success of the team development day?
How will you keep the magic of the team development day alive and relevant in the office?
Looking to let the team blow off steam – great!
Needing to develop your team’s creativity – fantastic!
Develop team unity and focus at the start of a project? – Superb!
Wanting to get to know everyone better for some team bonding? – Great!!
It’s all great. Visualfunk spends the time getting to know exactly what you want for your team development program. Visualfunk then deliver a team building program that will be dynamic, fun and truly deliver the results you and your team are looking for.
Why does a Visualfunk team building experience work?
- By creating a ‘negativity-free’ environment to achieve successful team outcomes
- Creative, unique team building experiences that develop a ‘what’s possible?’ mentality where EVERYONE participates and achieves success as they unleash their creativity
- Extensive pre and post program consultation
- Finding out what you want to achieve and why it hasn’t happened so far
- Delivering a program that exceed all expectations and that can measure ROI
- Providing a road map for continued success
- Dynamic and creative facilitators with experience in both the corporate and creative worlds: People who understand the art of creativity because they practice it and who can connect with and engage your people
- 10 years experience in team building in both Europe and Australia
- Imagination. We have plenty of it! Visualfunk is constantly working with clients to design new team building activities and team development programs that are outside of the norm
Why Creative Team Building?
At Visualfunk, we believe that creativity and continual innovation are essential for any organisation to be successful. We believe that creative team building – where teams work together in a way that develops their creativity – has an important role to play in fostering innovation. We also believe that creative team building has a strong role to play across team, organisational and personal development. And here is a just a few of the reasons why….
Team Development
- Creative team building takes teams on a new journey.
- Teams need a new metaphor and process for team building. Something other than the army, sport or shooting each other (lasers, not real bullets). You don’t have to have been in the army to know something about team development.
- Creative team building focuses on collaboration rather than competition.
- Creative team building enables team mates to open up great new lines of communication and develop a better understanding of each other.
- Creative team building puts everyone on a level playing field enabling everyone to participate and achieve success.
- Creative team building takes teams into a new space and gives them new ideas and approaches to explore.
- Creative team building gives you another option outside of an ultra-competitive race type program.
- Creative team building encourages teams to use their brains the way they were designed to – whole brain thinking.
- Creative team building promotes team freshness. Freshness promotes team energy and new ideas. Energy promotes movement, momentum, better results and a great work place environment.
- By achieving, doing or creating something they didn’t think possible, teams develop a ‘we can’ attitude rather than ‘we can’t’ attitude.
- Creative team building gives people a WOW experience.
- Creative team building enables people to develop new skills that they didn’t previously have.
Organisational Development
- Creativity is a massively under used resource in organisations. As jobs that can be done cheaper are being moved overseas, organisational creativity is a competitive advantage. Creativity is the key to innovation.
- A recent survey of top executives from Fortune 500 companies throughout the United States ranked creativity more important than intelligence for success in business today. That’s because these demanding times require leaders who can respond quickly and imaginatively to change. Innovative Thinking: Six Simple Secrets, Padi Selwyn, 2007
- All companies say they value creativity and innovation but few practice it. Engaging in creative experiences enables you to develop the behaviours and mindset where creativity and innovation happens.
- Creativity is not just about thinking – it’s about doing. You have to give your creativity and your whole brain a work out.
- Creative team building focuses on collaboration rather than competition. Working together rather than against each other.
- Creativity opens up the mind, enables fresh new perspectives and develops what’s possible thinking.
- The arts, culture and creativity offers many fantastic metaphors and lessons for the corporate world. These include whole brain thought processes, lateral thinking, unique ways of problem solving, the ability to see the world in a different way and constant innovation.
- Creative team development puts the focus and responsibility of innovation on people, rather than just looking at process improvement.
Personal Development
- Doing something creative takes people out of their comfort zone in a fun and rewarding way. Great things happen when people operate out of their comfort zone. Remember, comfort zones don’t have to be physical – i.e. standing on the top of a cliff. There are plenty of mental cliffs that people need to go over as well (and you don’t need a rope!)
- Creativity lets you tap into your inner child – the happiness, the energy, the spontaneity, the freshness and a can-do-anything attitude.
- Creative team building gives people a new experience – don’t we all secretly crave something new and exciting?
- Developing your creativity develops whole brain thinking – who ever heard anyone say they only want to use half their brain?
- Creative team building enables people to discover they can achieve much more.
- Doing something creative is fun – it’s the itch that we need to scratch.
- Creative team building lets people exercise all of their brain, not just half of it.
And creativity feels GOOD. Creativity helps people to feel fulfilled. It puts a smile on a person’s face. It gives a feeling of accomplishment. It enables a sense of achievement and connection with oneself. It lets people be closer to the person they dreamed of being. It gives people a broader view of the world. It gives people more choice and the knowledge that anything is possible. It restores balance in people’s brains enabling whole brain thinking. It encourages the brain to work how it was designed to. It restores balance in their work and personal life and it’s good for the soul.
