Train the Trainer

The Penguin Project offered a personal leadership and organisational change design training programme, Train the Trainer, built around a single guiding question: how can cultural workers keep their spark alive? The free programme brought together a group of ten cultural workers from across Europe for a ten-month learning journey, running from October 2022 to October 2023. Participants developed a deeper understanding of what charges and what drains them and others at work, and learned to harmonise personal leadership and organisational design for a more sustainable working environment.

The journey began in October 2022 with trainers connecting online and working through the Penguin Project's book, before the first in-person workshop took place from 18–20 January 2023 at Die Bäckerei – Kulturbackstube in Innsbruck. The founders themselves took part in a three-day workshop on embodiment and dance movement therapy, exploring the body as a source of insight beneath the surface of the mind, which sharpened their skills in designing profound participant experiences and incorporating movement into workshop design. The programme closed with a final three-day workshop in Innsbruck in October 2023, jointly led by the Train the Trainer team.

The objective of Train the Trainer was to disseminate the Penguin Project's methods and tools, enabling formal and informal peer-to-peer learning across the independent cultural sector. Trainees learned the theoretical underpinnings and creative methods behind the project, applied the tools in practice, and worked on making their own centres' working culture more sustainable. By the end of the programme, participants were equipped to facilitate their own workshops.

The Penguin Project was an initiative from cultural workers, for cultural workers, supporting the creation of sustainable working environments for both individuals and organisations. Started in 2019, the project spent several years developing its methods before this programme brought them to a wider group of practitioners, ready to disseminate its tools across the sector.