Exciting news here at Therapy Ideas HQ: on Wednesday Therapy Ideas Live won the Shine a Light Innovation Award at a champagne reception in central London. TV star Paul Ross presented me with the award (check out the photo.) Woohoo!

The awards were first given out last year by the Communication Trust, in association with Pearson Assessment, as part of the Year of Communication. They were developed to celebrate excellent practice in supporting children and young people’s communication development. The Innovation Award is a new addition to the categories this year: the judges were after creative projects that achieved great results.

We’re honoured to be the first recipient of this award! We were praised by the judges (PDF link) for our:

“innovative approach to engaging therapists in CPD in a cost effective way, and for using modern technology such as online ticketing and YouTube to facilitate ease of access.”

The judges also commented on the fact the system is adaptable and can be used by other professionals.

The events wouldn’t have been successful without all the support we’ve received from pro-active, forward thinking therapists who’ve attended, wonderful speakers, and generous sponsors. Thank you all!

2012 has been an exciting year for Therapy Ideas Live; a podcast series, our first full day workshop, a new format of evening events with longer presentations and group discussions, and now this award. I can’t wait to see what 2013 will bring!

With some friends and colleagues I’m trying something new: an evening of informal and informative lightning-style talks presented by ten SLTs from a range of backgrounds. Broaden your perspective, learn from others, share your own experiences, and socialise over a glass of wine—it’s a more inspiring version of CPD!

The first Therapy Ideas Live is happening on the evening of 5th July 2011, hosted at the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists in London. Ten amazing speakers–including Gina Davies, Marie Gascoigne, and Stephen Parsons–will each present for 5 minutes, with slides that advance automatically. Find out more on the event page.

Amazingly, all 50 free tickets for this event sold out within 24 hours, and we closed the waiting list when 50 more people had signed up. Thanks for your support! We plan to film the presentations and share them on this website.

We’re also planning another event at City University in the autumn. Register your interest and be the first to hear when tickets are released. And if you fancy sharing your experience, perspective, case study, or challenge, send us your talk idea using this form. You don’t need experience of public speaking: anyone can give a lightning talk (read this post for some handy tips), and we’ll give you plenty of help.

You can follow the event live on twitter, using the hashtag #therapyideas.

See you there!

I’m so excited that we’ve finally reached ‘soft launch’ day. I first started thinking about a website for SLT resources about two years ago and here it is, one of the first projects from Jonathan’s new web agency, Together London.

Please have a look around. At the moment there are about 25 ideas contributed by me and a small number of very special therapist friends, thanks girls! I hope the number of ideas will grow as therapists discover the site; making it an expanding and relevant resource.

Talking of resources, some ideas have resources attached, check out Same and Different. Print these out and you’re good to go, while you’re at it you could print out a set for school or parents too. There is a simple way to add photos, so you might want to use the site as a way of organizing your therapy photos- go on, upload that picture of pop up frog!

You’ll notice that the site is currently a bit focussed towards therapy for children, that’s because I’m a paediatric therapist. But all the infrastructure for adult ideas is there (at least I think it is, I’d really appreciate your constructive criticism) if you’re a therapist working with adults, why not add an idea?

So, what do you think? All comments, questions, feedback (and chocolate cakes) gratefully received.

Right, I think that’s about enough excitement for me, for one day. Thanks to Jonathan and David, you did a great job.

Rhiannan