Facilitating, Workshops and Speaking
The Third Layer works with organizations, groups and teams to build creative thinking skills with APLOMB.
Allow | Prompt | Let | Open | Marinate | Blueprint
Interactive creativity-inducing workshops, keynotes and ongoing classes
Simple-to-use, lifelong mental models for creative thinking, communication and creativity
Connection-building exercises, reflective writing, and just plain ol’ fun
Designed to create lifelong
Creativity is inefficient*
How it works
Do You Need The Third Layer?
Are you thriving creatively?
Are you not thriving creatively?
Might thriving more creatively help you, even in the teeniest bit?
Note: In surveys, a full 100% of my clients have reported they learned at least one insight into how their creative process best operated.
What It Looks Like
A 3- to 4-hour online collaborative session during a company retreat.
An in-person one-hour conference keynote for 200.
An ongoing (3- to 12-month) engagement for a small (6-24) group facing tough challenges.
Note: I require 30 days of notice for online engagements, 45 days for engagements in North America, and 60 days for the rest of the world. (Rush fee exceptions possible. See Working With Me for more information.)
Interested?
Click on the button below.
Fill out the form, or contact me.
Or, go to the Scheduling page to set up a 20-min chat.
Note: You literally don’t even have to send the form; I’ve included a couple of exercises to get you thinking. Also, please check out the Resource Library, where you’ll find dozens of posts about Marination vs Procrastination, the science behind creativity, or Creativity vs Creative Thinking.
* True story: My great-uncle Ernie (Ermal Fraze) invented both the pull tab and the pop top, or flip-top can we know today. Like most creative ideas, the pull tab was born out of the constraint of frustration (Ernie was stuck at a picnic with nothing to open his beer except a car bumper). Decades later, he went back to the drawing board for the flip-top.
Ernie wasn’t alone in his quest; several rivals were also trying to develop a method for keeping a tab on the can. After experimenting for years, Ernie came up with an earth-shatteringly simple yet creative idea: It wasn't about the tab. It was about the rivet that held the tab on.
Third Layer lesson: Solve the rivet, not the tab.
By allowing messiness at first, Third Layer creativity solves problems on a deeper, easier-to-access and more longer-lasting level.
FAQs
How many participants do you work with?
I work with three categories of participants: up to 25 participants (coincidentally, one easy-to-manage Zoom screen), 26 to 49 participants, or 50 to 1000. Each has its own pricing. My sweet spot is actually ongoing work with small groups of 8-12.
Are you a motivational speaker?
Nope. I teach practical, tangible steps on how to access your creativity or creative thinking. Each person will walk away with several exercises that include tangible steps they can take. If you feel motivated or inspired, that’s fine. But this is about enacting tangible, lifelong changes to your creative process.
Are we going to get a random instructor?
Never. When you hire The Third Layer, you will get the creator and founder, Alex Leviton. I have an incredible team behind me — researchers, assistants, designers, creative directors, business managers, coaches, etc — but the only person who can teach this is me, because it is entirely my invention.
Do you use a cookie cutter approach?
I always create a syllabus for each workshop. And I always throw it away at some point. The Third Layer is all about meeting you where you are, and that includes groups.
Who invented The Third Layer?
Me, Alex Leviton. As both a working writer for 25+ years as well as a manager, editorial director, teacher and co-founder who has managed, coached or taught thousands and thousands of writers and non-writers, I learned a thing or two about what helps the creative process thrive.
What kinds of companies hire you?
STEM, media, policy, universities, arts organizations, nonprofits, tech. I specialize in working with critical thinking orgs and people who have a creative side, but haven’t yet figured out how to best blend it in to their work selves.
One of the things I love about much of my feedback is that everyone is positive they’re the only ones who truly get The Third Layer work, and my workshops were aimed at exactly what they needed at that moment.
