Designing and facilitating the Future of Work in Surrey conference, turning cross-sector conversations into partnerships and £50,000 of successful funded research proposals.
Scribe Fox | Facilitation & Live Scribing
Challenge:
Multiple stakeholders needed to move from discussing workforce challenges to co-designing fundable research projects — in a single day
Solution:
Designed and facilitated a co-design conference using live scribing and our Bridge of Possibility framework to turn discussions into early-stage funding proposals
Results:
Partnerships formed, resulting in £50,000 of successful funding applications
“Thank you so much Team Nifty for a fantastic day…every experience with Nifty Fox has been positive and we have full faith in their ability. We’ve already seen 8 exciting funding applications!”
Julia Warsap - University of Surrey
"It was a pleasure, what a great event. Loved the energy that Nifty Fox brought!”
Renee Canter - University of Surrey
Surrey faces growing workforce challenges: rising numbers of young people not in education, employment, or training; rapid changes driven by AI and automation; and skills gaps across multiple industries. Universities, local authorities, businesses, and community organisations all have pieces of the puzzle, but they rarely sit in the same room; and when they do, conversations tend to stay high-level.
The organisers didn’t want another conference where people exchanged business cards and went back to their silos. They wanted tangible outputs: new partnerships, aligned priorities, and the foundations of fundable collaborative research. The challenge was moving a room full of people from “interesting discussion” to “we’re writing a bid together” in a single day.
We worked with the organisers to structure the conference around action rather than presentation. Instead of keynotes followed by panel discussion followed by networking, we designed the day as a progressive co-design process. Each session built on the previous one, moving participants from identifying shared challenges to exploring complementary expertise to developing early-stage project concepts.
Using our Bridge of Possibility framework, we facilitated structured dialogue around four key themes: reducing skills shortages, supporting NEET young people, building AI capability in creative industries, and investing in workforce development. The framework helps groups that don’t usually collaborate find common ground quickly and move from shared interest to shared purpose.
Our live scribe captured key challenges, emerging ideas, and forming partnerships as they happened. This helped participants see connections across discussions in real time, created a shared visual record that kept everyone aligned, and produced assets the organisers could use afterwards to promote funding calls and sustain momentum.
The event was deliberately designed not to end at the event. Structured outputs — partnership maps, project concepts, shared priorities — gave participants concrete material to take forward. The visual scribe outputs continue to be used to promote the funding call and extend the reach of what started in that room.
What started as a one-day event became the foundation for an ongoing programme of cross-sector partnership.
If you’re bringing stakeholders together and need the event to generate outcomes, not just goodwill, the design of the day matters as much as the guest list. Facilitation that moves people from discussion to commitment, combined with visual tools that make emerging ideas tangible, is how you turn a conference into funded collaboration long-term.
We design and facilitate experiences that turn ideas into partnerships with purpose.
