Cheap team building activities in London

January 22, 2023 6:33 AM

I lead a team of 25 people at a non-profit in central London, and I'm trying to organise an away day consisting of a workshop in the morning and a fun activity in the afternoon. We have a £750 budget including lunch. We can probably get a free office space and some fairly cheap refreshments for coffee breaks and a cheap in-office lunch option if needed, but I'm struggling a bit on the 'fun team bonding activity' for the afternoon. Any ideas?

Further requirements:
- This is England so whenever it's booked there's a chance of rain - I'm thinking that makes outside activities risky so would prefer indoor option
- We are a big mix of ages/athleticism so people will probably get fed up if they have to be on their feet for a long time/mde to run around a lot
- We've been bowling before so looking for something different from that if possible

It's a tall order within the available budget I know, but there must be something out there that will work!

posted by anonymous to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (12 answers total)

Book a board game cafe for 2.5-3 hours?
posted by heatherlogan at 6:53 AM on January 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Scavenger hunt at the British Museum!
posted by dum spiro spero at 7:16 AM on January 22, 2023 [11 favorites]

Book a board game cafe for 2.5-3 hours?

More specifically, Draughts has a location in Hackney and another in Waterloo.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:45 AM on January 22, 2023

This is only a partial answer, because it won't keep you busy all afternoon, but the London Mithraeum offers free tours for up to 30 people. It's an amazing experience.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 8:20 AM on January 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

Years ago I took my team on the Tate to Tate ferry and we had a wander round each gallery. We set ourselves the challenge of finding a piece of art we liked and explaining why we liked it to the rest of the team. It was a good way of getting to know people better without the excruciating exercises you normally get at the start of away days.
posted by greycap at 11:46 AM on January 22, 2023 [9 favorites]

Came in to suggest a museum 'scavenger' hunt. You'd probably have to hire someone to create the hunt items; a museum might help.
posted by theora55 at 12:40 PM on January 22, 2023

A variation on the museum scavenger hunt could be to do it as a photo scavenger hunt, with the group split into a number of teams. Perhaps 8-10 categories, but open ended, with the groups submitting a photo in each category. Then collect the photos into a presentation and have a vote on each category. So rather than finding a specific thing, they are searching for (and being creative about) - using the British Museum as an example:
- Something from south of the Equator.
- Best colourful textile.
- A single photo including an object or objects representing a creature of the land, a creature of the air and a creature of the water.
- Something made during the lifetime of the youngest member on the team.
- Something made more than 5000 years ago.
posted by Superilla at 4:27 PM on January 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Puttshack might work, and seems to be within budget if you if you don’t eat there (though it’s hard to get pricing from the website). I have been to the Bank location for a corporate evening do surrounded by other corporate groups, and to the White City one for a chilled-out afternoon game with family. The afternoon visit was definitely more fun for me, but I enjoyed both. The high-tech, ridiculous putting holes are a lot of fun.
posted by sueinnyc at 6:49 PM on January 22, 2023

There's a lot that might be within budget:

- Crazy golf - Junkyard Golf in east London is very good, there's also one on Oxford St that was fine but not quite as good IMHO. Play in groups and be as competitive as you like.
- a lot of places now do axe throwing
- Flight Club - darts
- Bounce - (table tennis, many venues)
- Escape room (so many)

You can buy ready-made scavenger hunts for the big museums, though, in case of rain - picking one at random off Google I found That Muse Treasure Hunt for the BM.
posted by NoiselessPenguin at 2:03 PM on January 23, 2023

I have run a photo scavenger hunt which went down very well. It works better if at least one person on each team thinks creatively/laterally. There is usually quite a bit of walking involved so that might be problematic.

Would that budget stretch to an escape room? Those can work well for team building and are not usually too overactive.
posted by plonkee at 2:25 PM on January 23, 2023

You could run a few games of "Two Rooms and a Boom"
You will need two rooms and a copy of the game.
It's a fun and reasonably straight forward game of social deduction that plays up to 30.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 2:31 AM on January 24, 2023

As you will probably know, there's very little to do in London that doesn't involve a fair amount of walking!

I've not vetted pricing here 100% but these are all things I've done before with colleagues which were mostly self-funded, so would expect they're around your budget. I also am not recommending these companies specifically, they're just examples.

Outdoor options:
- a scavenger hunt which you design yourself
- a self-guided audio walking tour - these can be inexpensive to free, just require everyone to have a smartphone and headphones. I did one recently around London's theatres.
- a paid-guide walking tour - anything from historical buildings to Jack the Ripper to Karl Marx
- an app-based clue-solving location hunt - you basically solve clues which take you to the next location. These tend to involve a stop in a bar for a free drink.
- Drink while you cycle around the city - London Beer Bike

Indoor options - lots of these will do group pricing if you call
- Flight Club - posh darts
- Escape Room of some stripe
- The Crystal Maze
- Curling
- a VR experience (there are tons)
- old-school laser tag
- yoga class
- brewery tour
posted by citands at 4:44 AM on January 24, 2023 [1 favorite]