How to run a workshop: flyer, form, slides and feedback

To run a workshop, work through five stages in order: plan the outcome and the objectives, promote it with a flyer that puts the price beside the date, take registrations through a form that settles cancellations and access before the day, deliver it as a mix of short input and real practice, and collect feedback the next morning. Budget for the preparation. SessionLab’s rule of thumb is that preparing a workshop takes about double the time of the workshop itself, so a one day session needs at least two days of work behind it.

A workshop is not a talk. Eventbrite describes it as a shorter, more intimate event for a limited number of people, focused on a specific topic and built around instruction and active participation. Every stage below follows from that difference.

Plan: start from what people will be able to do

Write the outcome first, as something a person can do by the end of the day, then break it into three objectives. The Carnegie Mellon teaching centre’s advice for course design applies to a single day: objectives should say what learners will be able to do, they should be specific enough to check, and the activities and any assessment should line up with them. “Understand marketing” is not an objective. “Write one offer for your business and plan thirty days of posts for it” is.

Then decide the practical frame. Book a room whose layout suits group work rather than rows, check the projector, whiteboards and wifi, and set a seat cap. SessionLab suggests 5 to 12 participants for most participatory workshops. Equipment can set the cap for you: the Kilnhouse Studio wheel day has ten wheels and one tutor, so it has ten places.

Promote: sell the outcome, print the price

A workshop flyer has one job: turn a passer by into a booking. The Kilnhouse Studio workshop flyers show the pattern in three designs for three business workshops.

The outcome is the headline. The three designs, Marketing in a Morning, Decide With Your Data and Fix Your Website in a Day, each name the outcome in the headline, what the reader leaves with rather than the topic.

The price sits beside the date. The marketing morning prints Saturday 10 October 2026, 8:30am to 12:30pm, $190 with morning tea, as one line under the headline. The data day puts 9am to 4pm and $240 in its date bar, and the website day lists $220 and only 12 seats under the date. A flyer without a price collects enquiries instead of bookings.

The agenda is three steps. Audit your channels, write one offer, plan thirty days. Three steps show the shape of the day without committing you to a timetable that will slip.

Registering is one action. Two of the three designs carry a QR code for the booking link, and the third prints a short URL.

Put the A4 version on noticeboards and counters four to five weeks out, post the square version when bookings open, and use the story size for the last seats reminder. Eventbrite’s event marketing timeline makes the same point about the closing stretch: a final call push in the last days catches the people who meant to book.

Register: settle the hard questions in the form

The booking form is where a workshop avoids its two most common problems: a late cancellation and someone arriving with a need nobody prepared for. The Kilnhouse wheel day booking form handles both plainly.

It asks which date and which rate applies, with four rates for the same seat, from subsidised at $60 to pay it forward at $230, and a line explaining that nobody is asked to prove anything. It asks “Anything we should set up differently for you?” with examples of what that might mean, which gets real answers where “special requirements” gets a blank. It asks separately whether the person accepts the cancellation policy and the studio safety terms, and asks about photographs as a third, separate question, because consenting to one is not consenting to the other. A single signature at the end covers both agreements.

For the fields a larger event needs, such as badge names and dietary requirements, see event registration form fields, and what a registration form is covers the form type itself.

Deliver: short input, real practice, one check

Carnegie Mellon’s principles of learning include one that decides how a workshop day should run: goal directed practice coupled with targeted feedback improves the quality of learning. People learn the skill by doing it with someone telling them how they are going, not by watching slides about it.

The customer training deck is built that way. Eleven slides run a 75 minute session in a learning order rather than a feature tour: why the old process went, the mental model, one workflow done on the learners’ own phones, a situation the room will disagree about, the four mistakes that cause most support tickets, one comprehension check, and a summary card designed to be photographed.

On the day, open properly. SessionLab recommends settling people in, a short check in so everyone speaks early, a brief overview of the agenda and why the topic matters, before any content. Give clear instructions for each activity, keep every break even when time is short, and use a parking lot for good points that belong to another day. Eventbrite adds a practical closing step: finish with a list of resources and actionable tips people can use afterwards.

Feedback: ask the next morning

Ask while the day is still fresh, because a week later people remember whether they enjoyed it rather than what worked. The event feedback form is eight short screens: an overall rating, a rating grid for each session with a Skip option so a missed session does not drag its average down, what was best, what to change, a separate grid for venue, catering, schedule and registration, whether the person would come again, an optional role, and an optional name for a reply.

Keep the content ratings and the logistics ratings apart, as that form does. A workshop can be excellent and the room too cold, and mixing them hides which one to fix. Eventbrite’s guidance is to gather feedback through a quick survey, either at the end of the session or online afterwards.

The plan at a glance

The table at the end of this article sets out an eight week plan for a paid, in person workshop, from writing the objectives to setting the next date, with the artifact each task produces. For an internal or free session, compress the promotion weeks and keep everything else.

Common mistakes

Planning content instead of outcomes. A day built from a list of topics becomes a lecture. Start from what people will do.

Hiding the price. A workshop flyer without a price creates emails asking what it costs, and many people never send them.

Asking about access on the morning. A chair, a quieter corner or a left handed wheel takes a week to arrange and five minutes to ask about in the form.

Cutting the breaks to save time. SessionLab calls this one of the most common facilitator mistakes, and energy drops faster than time is saved.

Waiting a week for feedback. By then people remember whether they enjoyed it, not what worked.

Build it

The flyer generator page shows what it makes, and the guide to creating a flyer for Instagram and print walks through generating one from a description and exporting it. Put the outcome, date, time, venue, price and seat cap in the description, because generation fills text from your request and is instructed not to invent prices, dates or addresses. Leave the template blank and it returns 2 designs to choose from; pick one and it returns 1.

There are 8 canvas sizes, including A4 portrait, Instagram post and Instagram story, and changing a page’s size swaps in the design’s native variant where one exists. Only 25 of the 259 designs carry a QR slot and there is no QR tile in Add items, so if the booking link needs a QR code, choose a design that has one. PDF export includes every page, which suits a series of sessions kept as pages of one flyer, while PNG and JPG export the page you are on. An A4 page exports at 2480 by 3508 pixels; there is no bleed or crop marks, so check with your printer. For the booking form, a drawn signature covering the policies works in either form type; an e-signature request sent to someone else needs a classic form.