(Image credit: Marten Bjork on Unsplash)

When you work as a facilitator, some organisations work to a set fee which includes planning time. Some will separate out their planning and delivery fees. If, an organisation does the first option, I will automatically cut that fee in half because most sessions require at as much time to plan and prep as they do to deliver.

I've been a freelance facilitator for about three and half years now, and I was having a chat with a friend of mine who is a secondary school teacher. She said the first year was very full on, but it got easier in subsequent years because she already had made the resources she needed and could streamline planning a bit more. I wish that was true for freelance facilitation.

There may be some facilitators who do exactly this. If so, please show your faces and share your wisdom. I myself find that it's nearly impossible to replicate content because every group is so different and will likely be working towards different outcomes.

I spend hours researching scripts with the right number of parts and appropriate content.
I make up new games that will align with the strengths of the participants.
I have taught myself new skills to pass on because the group's interests lie in a specific area.

I suspect if I was brutal and broke down the numbers properly, the hours I spend preparing classes would not match the fee, but I don't know how to do it differently. I care too much about my participants, and I get excited by the challenge of making theatre work for them. There's a thrill in tracking down the perfect extract for a student who is about to unlock a new level of performance skill. There's a joy in writing the rules to a made-up game, and then hearing a child say it's their favourite. There's a huge satisfaction to watching a teen realise the warmup was linked to the main exercise and joining the dots in real time.

I have never ever saved myself time, but I like to think that's why I'm quite good at facilitating.

(If you came here looking for updates on Always An Artist, I still did my tasks. They were mostly prepping concepts for job applications, and choreography for community events. That's the update.)