NEON Access Academy Training – Engaging your audience: presentation skills for outreach

Access Academy Training

  • Date

      26/11/2025

  • Time

      9:30 am - 4:00 pm

This event is now fully booked. Please contact NEON at neon@uwl.ac.uk to be placed on the waiting list. Thank you.

 

In Person Event – Kings College London.

How do you grab the attention of a group of teens at 9am on a Monday morning? How can you change the course of a life through what you say? Whether public speaking is your greatest fear or you consider yourself a expert communicator, this one-day workshop will help you up your game.

We will explore how storytelling, comedy, interaction and the tools of oratory and rhetoric can be used to reach even the most disengaged audiences and disrupt default pathways.

Learning outcomes include:
• What is so effective about public speaking?
• How to structure a presentation of any length
• The importance of pace, volume and movement to captivate the room
• Effective use of space, Powerpoint, notes, props
• Different forms and purposes of interaction

Participants will have an opportunity to practise and hone their presentation skills in a safe and sensitive environment. No preparation beforehand will be expected.
This workshop is specifically targeted at those working in outreach with young people, but the presentation skills you will acquire are useful in a host of other contexts and also help to develop wider personal confidence.

About the facilitator
Johnny Rich is, among other roles, the Chief Executive of the award-winning outreach organisation Push, for which he has delivered over a thousand presentations in schools and colleges and coached hundreds of presenters. He has also provided presentation and media training to everyone from senior leaders in industry to nervous novices.

Johnny is a well-known figure in the HE and careers sectors and a regular commentator on issues relating to access. Among his other roles, he is also Chief Executive of the Engineering Professors’ Council, the representative body of the UK’s Engineering academics, a member of various board such as the Lifelong Education Institute, and a consultant in higher education policy and communications, working with leading think tanks, charities, media organisations and educational institutions.

With a career spanning beyond the education sector into publishing, journalism, television and radio, Johnny appears regularly in the media and is a sought-after public speaker. He is widely regarded as an expert on student choice, employability and social justice through educational opportunity. He is the author of several books including the highly acclaimed novel The Human Script.

BlueSky: @johnnyrich.com
Twitter/X: @JohnnySRich
LinkedIn: JohnnyRich

www.push.co.uk