Happy New Year, and we hope yours has got off to a great start! We have hit the ground running at CN Towers, with some great projects and ideas coming through the door, which makes us think that people are rearing to go in 2013. We know we are, enough of the doom and gloom!

In the spirit of getting into action, we would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to the Creative Nation Roundtable. These have been happening for some time, so we thought we ought to give them a name and an identity, and let you all know about them! Perhaps you or someone you know could benefit from this sort of activity to kickstart 2013?

he Creative Nation Round Table is a vehicle to enable you to gain practical access to our network of cumulative wisdom, knowledge and skills, outside of a formal piece of work. You tell us what you want to invest the time in, we hand pick the best industry experts, thinkers and/or technicians for the job and facilitate.
Once we have agreed what you want to achieve, we will do the prep to ensure a session most appropriate for your needs. We can then come to you, or find us all some neutral ground somewhere inspiring and appropriate for the ‘work’ we need to do together. All sessions are informal, interactive and designed to address specific strategic, creative  or production challenges or objectives. These may be one off, regular and/or project specific sessions and may include;

• Creating or interpreting a brief - sometimes it helps to have new eyes look at an existing brief or scheme of work to bring some fresh ideas and perspectives in order to get it moving
• Exploring a specific challenge – you have a business, production or creative need and need some support on how best to approach it. We enable you to identify what and who you need
• Adapting to a changing work pace/flow – working within a multi-agency team, adapting to a restructure or working with less internal resource can pile on the pressure. We work alongside you to plug any gaps and bring the energy and resources you need to your projects, pitches and day to day.
• Reviewing, planning and strategizing- giving yourself time/resources/perspective to understand, contextualise and place your work within your industry and the economy as whole can be very valuable. Our talent are on top of the game and know what your competitors are doing and what works. Pick their brains!
• Focus groups- from within our network we can source a variety of people and organisations and facilitate focus groups sessions to provide you with the input you need. We work alongside research companies and can enable you to access up to date research relevant to your needs.

No specific skills are required and people are encouraged to interact as little or as much as they feel comfortable. We do not use role play or techniques that make people feel self-conscious. Each session will include some or all of the following; group discussion, troubleshooting, shared experience, brain storming, creative play, information on and practical use of professional disciplines and advice and direction toward other resources.
We believe our Round Table will provide an excellent route to getting 2013 off to a great start and will be making a limited number of sessions available at a reduced cost through January and February. Please contact us if you have any questions or ideas you would like to share.

In the meantime, we have recently refreshed our website, including a new showreel of our film and motion graphics work, so please pay it a visit.

Wishing you all the best for a successful and happy 2013!