Discover the Best Team Building Events in NYC
If you and most of your team or employees are located in or around New York City, you may want to consider a live, in-person team building event held at the CourseHorse event facility. These events are excellent ways to build team cohesion, encourage social interaction between members of your team or organization and get your employees to know one another. These events can also provide your employees with valuable skills training in practical work-related skills and transferable soft skills. Regardless of what you hope your team building event achieves, CourseHorse is available to help you find the right event to suit your needs and work with you to customize your event to accomplish all of your goals.
What is a Team Building Event?
Team building events are a wide range of different, outside-of-work social activities or courses that your employees or members of your work team participate in together to bond and become a more cohesive unit. These events include everything from live cooking or improv classes to professional skills development courses to pizza parties. So long as it brings your team together to socialize and learn or have fun, it constitutes a team building event. CourseHorse aims to make the process of preparing and running these events as simple as possible for you and your team. All of the materials are available to you at CourseHorse’s event facility, and they will provide expert instructors and facilitators who can ensure that your event is a success.
Reasons to Host a Team Building Event
You would want to host a team event for many reasons. They are ideal options for teams looking for a fun and social outing to build team cohesion and camaraderie, and they are good events for celebrating your team or rewarding them for a job well done. They can make your team feel appreciated for the work that they do, and they can build workplace morale. These events are also good icebreaker activities to help new teams get closer to each other and learn more about each other and themselves. The social function of these events is multifaceted, and if you are looking for a way to organize a compelling event to bring your team together as more than just coworkers, hosting a live event is a great way to accomplish that goal.
Team building events can also serve practical skills development functions, particularly for specialized teams who need specific training. CourseHorse provides your team with all the equipment they need to start their training and a professional instructor who can guide them through the skills training they need. This training can include things like introductions to Microsoft or Excel applications, general skills training in subjects like machine learning, digital marketing or SEO or soft skills like communication and stress management. These events are excellent ways to provide your team members with practical skills to benefit their personal and professional lives and make your teams more efficient and productive. In these courses, participants will get hands-on experience working with the tools that they need to learn, and their experienced instructors will be there every step of the way. You can even discuss lesson options with CourseHorse to help customize the class to fit the specific needs of your team, including the level of study that your corporate training event covers.
In addition to the practical reasons to host a team building event, these events can simply be a fun way for your team members to unwind and enjoy spending an evening together. CourseHorse aims to ensure that its events are memorable and exciting experiences that your team members will enjoy and want to attend. CourseHorse facilitators have years of experience serving as hosts for team building events and you can rest assured that they will manage to get your team members out of their shells and that they will enjoy the activity that you have planned for them. Even if you have no greater goals than rewarding your team members and offering them a fun experience at one of CourseHorse’s team building classrooms, you will likely find what you are looking for in NYC.
In-Person or Online
While CourseHorse does offer a robust selection of in-person team building events at their NYC facilities, they also offer a huge range of virtual team building events and activities. When you are deciding whether or not to hold your team building event in person or online, there are a lot of different things to consider, given that each modality comes with its own strengths and weaknesses. Either way, you can be assured that the experience will be excellent, but some kinds of courses are likely to produce different results if they are held on digital platforms or at CourseHorse’s facility.
In-person events tend to be more personal, and they give participants an opportunity to meet one another face to face and speak in person, which can make the events feel more personal and sociable than if they were in a massive Zoom meeting. This can massively improve icebreaker events and make an event's interpersonal aspect feel more rewarding. In addition, if the event is a skills training course, whether a professional development class or something more laid back, like a cooking class, learning in person can make the process significantly easier since you have complete access to the tech or supplies that you need and you’ll be in the same room as your instructor, making it easier to ask questions and receive feedback. The drawback to these courses is two-fold. There are more logistical concerns to address since participants must travel to attend the event, which can be difficult in NYC and reduce turnout. The second disadvantage is that many CourseHorse events are only available online, and those that are available in person are much more limited by space. While some online events can host as many as 200 people, in-person events may only be able to host a few dozen.
Hosting your team building event on a virtual platform makes it easier to attend, and more of your team members and guests may be able to participate. In addition, this makes it slightly less stressful or time-consuming for participants to attend since they will already be at their homes when it is time for the event to take place. Beyond this, there is a wider range of virtual team building events available since the lack of a need for physical space gives you more options to choose from when planning your event. The drawback to these events is that they may feel less personal for your team members since they will spend the majority of the time interacting via a digital platform, and they are more likely to become distracted by their surroundings. Finally, while CourseHorse does supply most of the shippable materials and ingredients to participants, there are things that they will need to supply for themselves (though CourseHorse does provide gift cards to reimburse participants who need to buy supplies). This can result in participants having different materials and having challenges fully completing a project or recipe.
Events in NYC
If you are looking for an event in NYC, plenty of in-person team building events are available through CourseHorse. These events are all held at CourseHorse’s fully stocked event space, and participants will have the opportunity to take advantage of all of the tech, supplies and materials available on-site. CourseHorses’s offerings range from fun team building classes, including cooking classes in CourseHorse’s professional test kitchen, to professional development courses in their state-of-the-art technology labs. No matter what kind of event you are looking for, there is a good chance of an in-person option for a course that will fit your needs.
Cooking Classes
CourseHorse offers various different cooking classes for you to choose from, ranging from simple dessert-making classes to courses in which you can have your participants prepare an entire meal to eat on-site as a group. These cooking classes are ideal places to provide your team members with practical skills training and a fun and enjoyable evening spent together, meaning that this is a kind of course that can pull double duty. These courses are more likely to attract a large crowd since they end with the promise of food and sweets. All of the materials and ingredients will be available at the CourseHorse kitchen, and an experienced instructor will be able to lead participants through every step of the cooking process, including how to replicate the recipe in their home kitchens.
If you are interested in an elaborate cooking course, consider a course like the Japanese Vegan Cooking course, in which participants will learn how to cook an organic trumpet mushroom carpaccio, a main entree of herbed creamy tofu ricotta lasagna with brown rice pasta, before finishing off with a dessert of an organic apple rose tart with almond creme. Similarly, CourseHorse offers an Authentic Handmade Chinese Dumpling Workshop that will see participants making their own dough and hand-rolling dumplings with their choice of filling and then learning to cook them in various ways. This course offers a great way to learn simple cooking techniques for preparing meals and appetizers that participants can recreate on their own if they find these recipes worth the effort.
CourseHorse also offers an array of dessert-making and baking classes that may be more to your team’s liking. These include things like the French Macaron, Traditional Croissant and Candy Making: Truffles and Brittles workshops. In these courses, students will get hands-on experience working preparing the dough and cooking delicious pastries and year-round or seasonal desserts. These courses are a great fit if you want a simple, light cooking class that won’t involve too much activity and concentration but will still produce unforgettable food.
Art Classes
Another great kind of class team building event that will draw attendees in is an in-person arts and crafts class in which participants will get to flex their creative muscles and make something they can take home with them to display at their home or office. These art classes are excellent opportunities to get participants chatting with one another over their projects, sharing their ideas and expressing themselves creatively, all of which can be great for building team morale and cohesion. Plus, everyone will leave the class with a completed project to show off as a display of what they learned and their artistic talents. These are all beginner-friendly programs, so even participants without art training can learn the basics of artistic expression.
If you are looking for a low-stakes art experience as much about socializing as the art, consider signing your team up for an Acrylic Paint and Sip BYOB session. In this fun team building event, participants will be given a pre-sketched canvas to fill in with any of the many colors of acrylic paint offered at the studio. If you want to customize the event, you can even provide your own image to have your team paint together. The event is BYOB, but wine and beer are encouraged to make the event more sociable and enjoyable, and beverages are available for purchase on-site. If you are looking for something more elaborate, consider the Modern Calligraphy event where participants will learn the fine art of writing and sketching beautiful inked letters and images. This course is a great way to introduce participants to a new hobby they can expand on by learning new techniques or enrolling in further courses.
One of CourseHorses’s most popular programs is their Terrarium Making Workshop. In this seminar, participants will learn how to create vibrant, living works of art using mosses, succulents and rocks. The Terrarium Making Workshop will provide participants with all of the supplies needed to start building their terrarium, and they will receive advice and instruction on how to expand it into a flourishing art piece that is also a thriving ecosystem. Alternatively, you can opt to hold a Candle Making Workshop and let your participants leave with a practical scented candle that they can use to light up (and freshen up) their homes. This workshop will provide participants with the training they need to start making their own candles at home, which can be a fun artisanal hobby and a good way to save money if you are a frequent user of candles.
Tasting and Mixology Events
Sometimes, you may want to cut out the complicated cooking process and just hold an event that focuses on food and drinks. These tasting sessions or mixology classes are an excellent way to reward team members and make them feel appreciated or set up a low-stakes, social environment where new team members can get to know one another. These events require almost no work on the part of participants (and even the mixology lessons can be very quick), giving them ample time to dedicate their attention to meeting and interacting with the other participants. As an added bonus, they can learn practical hospitality skills, and it is just all that much easier to get participants to attend when the promise is free food and drinks.
CourseHorse offers a Beer and Cheese tasting event that will see participants learning the finer aspects of tasting cheese and how that cheese can be paired with various beers to create stunning flavor profiles. While most people assume cheese will naturally be paired with wine, this event demonstrates how easily cheese and beer can be brought together. This event is a collaboration between Top Hops and Murray’s Cheese and sees some of NYC’s finest food institutions coming together to put on an unforgettable evening for your team. If you are looking for a slightly less structured option and not quite as fancy, consider an old-fashioned Pizza Party. This event is as simple as they come, have your participants show up and enjoy some top-quality New York pizza and drinks as everyone has a good time. Drinks are available onsite though they are not included in the price (everything else, including the pizza and the set-up, is included).
Another option for a tasting course is a mixology course. In these classes, participants will learn the art and science of mixing cocktails, including why certain ingredients are paired, or drinks are mixed in certain ways. These courses are ideal for group outings, and they give your participants a chance to enjoy the act of winding at a happy hour without needing to go to a bar. If you want classic cocktails, like an Old Fashioned, a Negroni or a Margarita, you can learn to make these in the Craft Cocktail Making class. If you want a more elaborate experience that will teach your participants professional bartending skills, the Classic and Creative Cocktails class and the DIY Mixology courses are built to fit your needs. In these classes, small groups of participants will learn to make several classic and contemporary cocktails that they can use to impress their friends or share when hosting their next event.
Professional Development Classes
While not always the most exciting kind of team building event, professional development skills courses can ensure that your business and workflow run smoothly and that your team members are up to date on important information and concepts. They can also be utilized to help keep your team functioning as a unit and operating at peak performance. They can also be a good way to introduce new team members to important professional concepts or ensure that older team members stay current on the latest trends in their field. No matter your reason for wanting to employ professional skill development training, CourseHorse has a corporate training option that will suit your needs, and all attendees will be able to work at CourseHorse’s state-of-the-art technology lab and receive instruction from skilled professionals with years of experience teaching these subjects
If you are interested in focused professional training options, CourseHorse has a variety of corporate training courses available. These classes are fairly customizable and primarily target tech and business professionals, graphic designers, and other professional art teams. Some of the courses cover the use of specific applications, like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere Pro, Microsoft Excel or Tableau. In courses, students will get hands-on experience working with these applications and get guided instruction in adding them to their professional repertoire. In addition, CourseHorse offers broader skills training options, such as a Graphic Design training program, an SEO training program and a Financial Modeling training program. These are just a few of the course offerings available through CourseHorse, so if you are interested in professional development training for your teams, consider exploring the options available and contact a representative.
If you are interested in a less focused training program that will still help your team members build the necessary soft skills to succeed in your industry, consider one of the communication courses offered by CourseHorse. These classes are designed to teach participants social and performance skills that easily translate into workplace skills. In The Art of Conversation, students will learn the finer points of making small talk, getting to know people through conversation and, by extension, networking, making this a great class for anyone who regularly interacts with clients. Another option is the Storytelling for Business: Presentations to Pitches course, which aims to teach participants how to spin their ideas and utilize tried and true narrative storytelling techniques to create the perfect pitches and deliver expert presentations. This course is ideal for any team regularly working in communications or sales. This is also a good course for team members looking to become more comfortable working in front of crowds.
Book with CourseHorse
Once you’ve decided that an in-person NYC team building event is the right fit for you, consider contacting CourseHorse to schedule an event. You will be put into contact with an event coordinator who can help you plan and schedule the event and discuss the customization options available to make your event perfect. CourseHorse handles almost all of the event logistics, including shipping materials and setting up the event space. This means that once the event leaves your hands, you can be confident that it is being handled by experienced event organizers, and you can comfortably participate in your own team building event. Contact CourseHorse today to learn more.
