Who We Are
Slung Low is an award-winning theatre company and sector leader, specialising in making epic productions in non-theatre spaces, usually outdoors, and often with large community performance companies at their heart. We have made work with and for the BBC, The Royal Shakespeare Company and major UK Cities of Culture.
Over the past five years, we’ve been developing Leadership Programmes for members of our community here in South Leeds, as well as nationally, for arts leaders.
At a time when many theatres and performing arts venues closed their doors to the public during the Covid pandemic, Slung Low did the opposite. With our collective imagination, commitment to our shared values, and can-do attitude as one of the UK’s most innovative theatre companies, we transformed into a temporary, non-means tested, self-referral food bank, operating out of the oldest working men’s club in the UK. We continued telling stories, creating theatre when and where we could, and we made ourselves as useful as possible with the resources and opportunities we had around us.
No two weeks are the same for Slung Low. However, there are a handful of constants: if we have something, we will share it, we will find a way to say ‘yes’, we will be bold. As a cultural organisation, everything we do is a creative act.
We are story-tellers, sector leaders, trail-blazers, unafraid of living, and leading, by our values.
Why Slung Low
Slung Low is delighted to make our unique approach to Leadership Development available to UK organisations. Adapted to each company’s specific context, we will take a dynamic deep dive into how Values-Based Leadership can be a powerful resource with which to navigate the complexities of our ever-changing landscape.
Over our twenty five years of making extraordinary theatre and facilitating a broad range of learning programmes, we ground everything we do in the active pursuit of excellence and in the belief that actions, however small, can have a big impact.
We bring our values-based approach to our Leadership Development Programmes, taking teams outside into nature, with an emphasis on outdoor adventure training, co-creation, thriving amid complexity, and addressing some of the challenges organisations are currently facing around company culture, purpose, the ability to adapt, and sustainability.
All profits made from running our Leadership Development Programmes are invested directly back into the company’s work with our community here in South Leeds. By choosing Slung Low, your organisation will directly fund our on-going community-based activities, our commitment to our belief that everyone should have access to a rich cultural life, and that culture can change the world for the better.
What We Offer
A range of residential Leadership Development Programmes, held over two, three, or five days, exploring Values-Based Leadership through adventure training, facilitated group discussion, guest speakers and outdoor activity.
Our focus is on experiential learning, mostly outdoors. We manage 16 acres of semi-ancient woodland in the Holme Valley, just south of Leeds, and much of our work is based there.
Values underpin everything we say and do, as individuals, team members and as organisations. The programmes we offer centre on deepening curiosity and awareness around our own unique perspectives and patterns in a leadership context, and more broadly on an organisational level, creating a catalyst for innovation, effective action and sustainable work-place progression.
Slung Low’s residential courses (fully catered with accommodation provided) offer combinations of:
• Interactive workshop sessions on a range of topics, including Leadership Styles, Storytelling in Leadership, and Imaginative Planning.
• Exploring routes to implementing meaningful change in the workplace and in our personal development as Leaders
• Outdoor and adventure training programmes, designed to stretch delegates both physically and mentally
• Open group discussion and reading offers
• A 1:1 Leadership coaching session
• Navigation: developing practical and emotional skills to guide each delegate’s Leadership journey
In addition, we offer an online integration discussion session with a member of the Slung Low team upon completion of the programme, as a space to reflect upon how the experience has impacted the individual’s Leadership journey, and what next steps might be.
Delicious, home-cooked vegetarian food and refreshments throughout each day will be provided by our team. Every care will be taken to ensure participating leaders feel fully supported, in a co-created generative space, ready to meet the challenges and to engage with the provocations which each day of the programme brings.
Our approach to Vales Based Leadership Development is entirely unique. You won’t find anything else like it in the UK. Drawing on over two decades of experience of outdoor theatre making, facilitating learning programmes, British Army Reserve service and a company policy of rigorous outdoor training, the collective skill-set of the Slung Low team guarantees a rewarding, impactful and inspiring experience.