When a workshop is even more popular than planned!

Yesterday I was running a fabric printing drop-in workshop as part of an NHS Health, Safety & Wellbeing Day inside one of our huge local Manchester hospitals.

The event itself was brilliant. A busy staff wellbeing space filled with different tables and activities, from dieticians and personal trainers to free massages and health advice. Most of the people attending were the staff members who quietly keep a hospital running day-to-day, from post room staff to admin teams and support workers, and from the start the room was incredibly busy.

My original workshop had been designed as a simple drop-in fabric-printing activity where participants could use my collection of hand-designed stamps, flowers, and leaves alongside fabric inks to decorate wash bags. The stamps are designs I create myself and have professionally made into wooden handled printing blocks, and from the moment the session started, people absolutely loved them.

Particularly the Manchester Bee stamp, which ended up appearing on almost every bag.

The plan had originally been for around 40 participants across the day, and I’d already prepared extra materials because I suspected demand might be higher. The previous week I’d coordinated the same workshop across another hospital site with another artist delivering the session while I was away, so I already knew the activity had been incredibly popular.

But just over an hour into a four-hour session, we completely ran out of bags.

And then we ran out of spare tote bags too.

I'd already delivered the workshop to more people than I'd been booked to do, but I knew walking away at that point wasn't what the organiser expected, and also wasn't what I wanted to do. There were people there looking for ways to take a creative moment to themselves, and I wanted to be able to offer that to as many people as possible.

The organiser had handed me a stack of regular printer paper, and asked me to use that instead, and luckily all my experience and my brain that loves a creative challenge kicked in.

I could technically have just carried on with the same stamps and a sheet of paper, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that would completely change the feeling of the activity. Printing onto fabric encourages people to think about texture, layering and placement in a very tactile way. On plain paper, the stamps suddenly felt flatter and less engaging.

So I took ten minutes, stepped away for lunch, and redesigned the workshop.

Instead of focusing on the stamps, I created a kind of print rally running across the length of the table. Six different stations, each with a different flower or leaf and a different ink colour. Participants moved from station to station, building up layers of texture and pattern across the paper, choosing which elements to use and where to place them. For the final station, I added the Manchester Bee stamp back in as an optional finishing touch, and it looked completely different sitting amongst all the natural textures.

Honestly, I ended up loving the results.

The afternoon became quieter and more conversational, and people really slowed down into the process. There was something lovely about watching participants move steadily along the table, experimenting with the different textures, techniques and combinations. It also opened up lots of conversations about how creative activities like this can work across all age groups and settings because the process itself is so simple and approachable. And the appeal for people coming to the table became less about 'ooo free tote bag' and more about the actual printing process itself.

It reminded me of something important about running creative workshops.

Experience matters.

If I’d only been running workshops for a few months, I think I probably would have either panicked, ended the session early, or carried on with an activity I knew wasn’t quite right and didn't meet my own high standards. Instead, I had enough experience to stop and ask myself what the workshop was actually trying to achieve.

Because ultimately, the goal wasn’t “decorate a bag” or "use stamps."

The goal was to give busy NHS staff a moment to pause, play, use their hands, and step away from the pressures of the day for a little while.

It reminded me that the best workshops are designed around the feeling people leave with, not just the product they take home. In the end, the materials changed completely halfway through the day, but the reason for running the workshop stayed exactly the same.

If you’re looking for mindful creative workshops for NHS teams, workplaces, wellbeing events or community programmes, I offer flexible drop-in and structured creative sessions across Manchester and the North West, all designed to help people slow down, reconnect and make something unexpected. Take a look at my workshop brochure here, or drop me an email at hoopandfred@gmail.com and we can start designing your perfect session together.