The Creativity Gym

In a world that’s retreated behind screens, we make space for the messy, joyful, surprising thing that happens when people actually show up for each other.

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For Organisations
Improv Storytelling Movement Stand-Up Poetry Visioning Performance Clowning

About Us

Human beings need more than a WiFi signal.

We live in an age of infinite content and vanishing connection.We’re scrolling, we’re behind screens, we’re missing the tone, the moment, the mark. People are more reachable than ever, and somehow lonelier.

Our Creativity Gym exists to fix that.

No lectures. Just a room full of people and a very well-stocked creativity toolbox. Where we connect is where we create.

We’re not here to make everyone an artist (though stranger things have happened). We’re here to help people reconnect with the part of themselves that plays, risks, and occasionally makes a complete fool of themselves.

The gloriously misjudged ideas.

The moments that feel ridiculous at first.

That’s where the real stuff lives.

The ideas. The breakthroughs. The belly laughs.

The unexpected solidarity of being in a room where everyone’s trying something new.

“We believe creativity isn’t a talent. It’s a muscle. And muscles need a workout.”

Say it louder ✦ Make something ✦ Connect for real ✦ Surprise yourself ✦ You’re more creative than you think ✦ Open up ✦ Say it louder ✦ Make something ✦ Connect for real ✦ Surprise yourself ✦ You’re more creative than you think ✦ Open up ✦

For People

90 minutes custom sessions.

A curated sequence of creativity exercises. Every tool in the box, drawn from improv, storytelling, movement, clowning, poetry and beyond.

Think of it like circuit training; but instead of biceps, you’re building your imagination, your presence, and your capacity to connect.

01 — Warm Up Your Weird

We start by shaking off the inhibitions, the internal critic, and whatever catastrophic email arrived this morning. You arrive as a professional. You leave as a human.

02 — Into the Toolbox

Each session draws from the full creativity toolkit;   improv games, storytelling exercises, movement prompts, collective poetry, stand-up structures, clowning, and more. No two sessions are the same.

03 — Land Something Real

Every session ends with a moment of genuine creative output:something made, something shared, something you’ll carry with you. The work is real, even when it’s playful.

For Organisations

WORK BETTER. THINK BIGGER

Here’s something organisations rarely admit: the best strategic thinking doesn’t happen in PowerPoint. It happens when people are genuinely engaged, genuinely listening, and genuinely willing to say something unexpected.

That’s where we come in. Our organisational workshops take the tools and concepts of creativity and innovation and put them directly in service of the things you actually need; sharper strategy, clearer communication, teams that trust each other enough to take real risks.

We’re not consultants who’ll hand you a framework and wave goodbye.

We’re facilitators who’ll get your people out of their chairs, into the room, and into something that actually changes how they work together.

Strategic Planning

Use the tools of improvisation and visioning to unlock genuinely fresh thinking : not just last year’s strategy with a new font.

Organisational Communication

Storytelling, presence, and the art of being heard: because strategy only works if people can communicate it.

Team Working & Culture

Trust is built in the doing. Our team sessions use shared creative experience to create the kind of psychological safety that makes teams genuinely perform.

The Creative Gym Manifesto

We believe that creativity is not reserved for the naturally gifted.

That connection is not a luxury but a necessity.

That the best ideas live on the other side of embarrassment.

That there is profound intelligence in a well-timed “yes, and.”

That the room , the actual, physical, sweaty, laughing, fumbling room, still matters.

We believe that in expressing yourself, you open yourself. And when people open themselves, really open, extraordinary things become possible.

CHAT TO US

Meet The Team

Between them: award-winning theatre, 25 years of organisational strategy, a Gold Ovation, an Edinburgh Fringe nomination, a distinction from UCT and numerous other awards.

Tshiamo Moretlwe

Tshiamo can make anything come alive; puppets, stories, rooms. 

David Schmidt

David has spent years using the tools of improv and storytelling to help people and organisations think differently. He takes the work seriously and himself lightly.

Sophie Joans

Sophie brings a background in performance and facilitation that makes her equally at home on a stage or in a boardroom — and equally dangerous in both.

In other words: you’re in good hands. 

An embarrassing amount of combined experience in creativity, facilitation and making rooms come alive.

Tshiamo Moretlwe

Tshiamo graduated with a BA (Hons) in Theatre and Performance with distinction from UCT in 2020, spent four years on the Dean’s Merit List, and won the Brett Goldin Memorial Cup for Acting.

So yes, she’s the one who actually studied this stuff properly.

Her voice work includes Lauren Beukes’ Moxyland and the McCann Global Health IMPOWER campaign. She’s performed internationally,  playing Ophelia and Gertrude in Janni Younge’s Hamlet, touring Chicago International Puppetry Festival, Abstract – 1st Budapest International Contemporary Puppet Festival, and the Festival Internacional de Teatro Progresista in Venezuela to name a few.

Tshiamo devised the Ovation-winning youth production KA‑BOOM! through UNIMA South Africa and was selected for Figura Theatre Festival’s Watch & Talk programme in Switzerland.

Her solo show Filled also won an Ovation at the 2025 National Arts Festival.

Tshiamo brings expertise in movement, collective creativity, and the kind of facilitation energy that makes people wonder why they were ever nervous in the first place.

David Schmidt

David is what happens when you give a strategist a poet’s soul and many years to figure out what to do with it.

He has spent a career working at the highest levels of the public and private sectors — in strategy development, leadership, facilitation and institutional capacity-building. 

He is Director of Strategies for Change, work in many public policy areas and is adjunct senior lecturer in public governance at UCT specialising in ethical leadership.

He holds degrees in law, economics and an MA in Creative Writing cum laude. His poetry appears in local and international journals.

In 2025, he wrote and performed his debut solo play to considerable acclaim — proving, definitively, that it’s never too late to take the stage.

Sophie Joans

Clown. Comedian. Theatre-maker. Trouble-maker. Sophie is one of those rare performers who can make you laugh, make you think, and make you slightly nervous — sometimes in the same sentence.

Named one of the M&G’s Top 200 Young South Africans for 2026, she has racked up an enviable list of accolades: her debut solo show ÎLE won the Gold Standard Bank Ovation Award at the National Arts Festival in 2022, and was one of just five nominees for the Filipa Bragança Award for Best Solo Female Performance at Edinburgh Fringe 2023 — out of 3,800 shows.

Her latest play, Netphlix, picked up another Ovation at the 2026 National Arts Festival.

She’s played Puck at Maynardville, co-created the UNIMA-prize-winning puppet show Ka-Boom, and has two experimental clown shows to her name. That’s all she’ll say about those.

When she’s not performing, Sophie teaches storytelling with Spark in the Dark and runs weekly clown workshops at Clown Town — because apparently one job is never enough.

How can we help spark your creativity?

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