Corporate Literacy Programs and Workplace Events.
Zou Zou Media House works with employers, funders and foundations across Canada on four things: workplace experiences, team writing workshops, corporate legacy books, and community literacy partnerships.
Why we run programs at all.
We are a publishing house. We could have stopped at making books. We did not, because a book on a shelf only does half the job. The other half happens when somebody reads it out loud, and a child interrupts to ask a question, and the room ends up somewhere nobody planned. That moment is the whole reason any of this exists.
Stories are how people practise being someone else for a while. They are how a child works out that other people have insides. They are how an older adult hands a piece of their life to a grandchild who was not born yet. And imagination is not a soft extra sitting beside the real learning. It is the thing that lets a person picture a version of their life that has not happened yet, which is the first step to going and getting it.
So we build programs that put a story in the middle of a room and then give people something to do with it.
OUR APPROACH
Storytelling sits at the centre. It reaches people in three ways.
Start with one lunch hour
Book a single team and a single hour.
WHAT WE DO
Your team builds nothing.
We arrive with the session written, the materials prepared and the facilitator con
How booking works
Reading and writing, in threes. Our reading and writing programs are sold in blocks of three sessions. A single session is a lovely afternoon. By the third, the group has settled, the conversation has depth and people are asking when the next one is.
Everything arrives with us. Texts, materials, facilitator and setup. For visual arts we supply the materials including scissors, and ask the host site only for glue and markers.
Built to fit a real schedule. Sixty minutes means sixty minutes. Sessions are designed around lunch hours, program blocks and PA day agendas rather than assuming you will clear a day for us.
Documented for your reporting. Facilitator biography, session outline, learning goals and materials list supplied in advance for procurement, posting or wellness committee approval.
FOR WORKPLACES AND CORPORATE TEAMS
The Read-Along Power Hour
One hour. A facilitator reads a short piece aloud. Nobody prepares anything, nobody presents anything, and nobody has to be a reader. The group listens, then talks, then goes back to work.
It sounds almost too simple to matter. That is exactly why it works. Being read to is one of the few remaining experiences that asks nothing of an adult except attention, and for most people it is the first time since childhood that anyone has done it for them.
Arrive and settle
10 MIN
People come as they are, with lunch in hand. No icebreaker, no introductions around the table, no expectation to perform. The facilitator sets the frame in two minutes.
The read-aloud
20 MIN
A short story, an essay or a poem, read aloud in sections by the facilitator. The text is handed out in the room, so there is nothing to prepare beforehand and nothing to finish afterwards.
The conversation
25 MIN
Facilitated discussion of what the text raised. Because people are talking about a character rather than themselves, the conversation goes somewhere real without anyone being asked to disclose anything. Colleagues hear each other differently
Close
5 MIN
A clean ending on time, so the hour respects the calendar it was booked into.
WHY READ-ALOUDS WORK FOR ADULTS
Not a novelty. An evidenced model.
Reading aloud in a facilitated group was developed in the United Kingdom as Shared Reading and has been studied by the University of Liverpool Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society.
Shared Reading groups have been shown to improve well-being, reduce loneliness and help people find new meaning in their lives.
In a partnered study of participants diagnosed with depression, clinical data showed statistically significant improvements in mental health over a twelve month period.
The model is deliberately non-clinical. Nobody is a patient. Nobody is fixed. People simply read together.
In a national survey, three-quarters of people said reading has a positive effect on their mental health and well-being, and just over 40 percent said it makes them feel connected to others.
The Reader and the University of Liverpool Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society
ALSO AVAILABLE FOR TEAMS
Writing Workshops
Facilitated creative and reflective writing for teams. Useful for leadership groups, employee resource groups and anyone marking a milestone, a merger or a departure. Nobody reads their work aloud unless they choose to.
60 TO 90 MINUTES
BLOCKS OF THREE
IN-PERSON OR VIRTUAL
Visual Arts for Teams
Collage, printmaking and mixed media, facilitated for adults. No art background required and no finished piece expected. The point is the making, not the outcome, and the evidence on what that does to a stressed nervous system is genuinely striking.
60 TO 90 MINUTES
BLOCKS OF THREE
MATERIALS SUPPLIED
Corporate Legacy Books
For organizations marking an anniversary, a founder's retirement or a community milestone. We gather the stories, write and design the book, and hand you something people actually keep.
PROJECT BASED
ENDS IN A PUBLISHED
BOOK
THE BUSINESS CASE, PLAINLY
You already know your people are tired. Here is what it costs.
-
500,000
Canadians miss work in any given week because of a mental health problem or illness.
Mental Health Commission of Canada
-
$1.62
median annual return for every dollar invested in workplace mental health, rising to $2.18 for programs running three years or more.
Deloitte Insights, Canada
-
75%
of adults in a Drexel University study showed lowered cortisol after 45 minutes of making art, whether or not they had any art experience.
Kaimal, Ray & Muniz, Art Therapy, 2016
What is actually missing
Roughly 70 percent of Canadian businesses still have no workplace mental health strategy. Most of the ones that do have built it out of policy documents and an employee assistance number. This is the part that is missing: something people actually want to attend, that costs one hour, that requires no disclosure, and that they talk about afterwards.
Writing Workshops for Schools.
Book a single class for 60 or 90 minutes.
FOR SCHOOLS
Curriculum-aligned, author-led, ready on arrival.
Our school programming is built around The Amazing Zoe series and delivered by the author. Every arts activity connects back to a book, so the making is not a craft break. It is the comprehension work, done with hands. Sessions arrive fully planned and fully supplied. Staff do not prepare, do not shop and do not clean up alone.
PRESCHOOL TO GRADE 8
TWO AGE STREAMS
MATERIALS SUPPLIED
BLOCKS OF THREE OR SIX
Visual Arts Enrichment
A read-aloud, a group discussion and a facilitated arts block, with a new theme each week. Collage, printmaking, textile and mixed media, streamed by age so the same theme works for a Kindergarten room and a Grade 6 room on the same day.
60 MINUTES PER SESSION FROM $599, MATERIALS INCLUDED RUNNING ACROSS FIVE VILLA CHARITIES LOCATIONS
Literacy Enrichment
Built around The Amazing Zoe series, whose six-year-old protagonist is a Canadian girl of Caribbean and East African heritage. Children meet a character who looks like someone in the room and a writer who is standing in front of them.
CURRICULUM-ALIGNED AUTHOR-LED DELIVERY SINGLE VISITS OR BLOCKS
Professional Learning for Educators
Two sessions for staff rather than students. One on teaching the arts without an arts background, one on culturally responsive practice through story. Built for additional PA days, school-based professional learning, federation locals and conferences.
60 MINUTES TO A FULL PA DAY TEACHERS, ECES, EAS AND LIBRARY STAFF
Bookmobile Visits
The Zou Zou Media House Bookmobile is Canada's first arts and culture bookmobile and a Diamond Award winner. The read-aloud happens on the bus, with a dance activation, and classes rotate through.
HALF DAY OR FULL DAY PARKED ON SITE
FOR AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAMS
The hardest hours of the day, handled.
After-school teams deliver hours of literacy and arts time every day with almost no curriculum support behind them. Our sessions drop straight into that block.
The format is the same one we run in schools: a read-aloud, a real conversation, then making. It works with mixed ages, it works in a shared gym or cafeteria, and it gives your staff an hour where the room runs itself. Many sites use the block as informal professional development, because staff pick up the structure by watching it.
Recently piloted as a six session block with an after-school provider in the Greater Toronto Area
FOR SENIORS, CAREGIVERS AND HOSPICE PARTNERS
Memoirs and Memories
Facilitated legacy writing for older adults and the people who care for them. Participants write from prompts, share only what they want to share, and finish with their words in a professionally published anthology they can hand to their family. Delivered with senior centres, hospice organizations and community partners across the Greater Toronto Area.
MULTI WEEK PROGRAM IN PERSON OR VIRTUAL ENDS IN A PUBLISHED ANTHOLOGY
Visual Arts for Older Adults
The same facilitated making, adapted for seated work, varied dexterity and mixed cognitive ability. Useful in long term care, adult day programs and caregiver respite settings.
60 TO 90 MINUTES BLOCKS OF THREE
Shared Read Aloud Sessions
The Power Hour format, slowed down. Particularly effective in dementia care settings, where a familiar text can reach someone that a direct question cannot.
60 MINUTES BLOCKS OF THREE
FOR LIBRARIES, FESTIVALS AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS
We bring the crowd something to do.
Author visits, storytime with a making component, family arts sessions and Bookmobile activations for festivals, library branches, EarlyON centres and community events.
We handle setup, supplies and cleanup.
SINGLE EVENTS OR SERIES INDOOR OR OUTDOOR BOOKMOBILE AVAILABLE
Why organizations book us
We arrive with the curriculum written, the materials prepared and the facilitator confirmed. Every program is delivered by trained facilitators, documented for your reporting requirements, and designed to fit inside a real institutional schedule.
Your team builds nothing.
Let's put creativity in the room.
Tell us the group, the date and roughly how many people. We will come back with a recommended format, a sample outline and a quote.