Working With Blue Noun
Guidance for Collaborators
This page is primarily for teachers, workshop leaders, and collaborators working with Blue Noun.
Welcome to Blue Noun
This page is an introduction to how Blue Noun works, what makes our approach different from mainstream ELT systems, and how your role fits into the wider experience.
It’s written to give you clarity, confidence, and permission to work with our clients in a way that feels human, spacious, and sustainable.
About Our Clients
Most people who come to Blue Noun have already spent years “learning English” in classrooms. This usually means they know far more than they think — but they don’t feel confident using English in real life. They’re used to focusing on what isn’t perfect, rather than feeling excited about what they can already do.
Many language holidays offer a short, intensive crash course. These can deliver a temporary language boost, but they often do nothing to change how people feel about their English. In some cases, they even reinforce self-criticism or a sense of failure. People arrive as “English learners” and go home as slightly better English learners — still measuring themselves, still holding back.
That’s not what we do here.
At Blue Noun, people are treated as English users from the start, whatever their level or mistakes. The aim isn’t perfection; it’s participation.
It’s well established that enjoyment is one of the strongest drivers of lasting change. If something feels good, safe, and meaningful, people return to it — and that’s how new habits stick.
Our holidays create space to play with English, to get a feel for the language without judgment and to reconnect with curiosity. We want English to shift from a “must do” (often linked with pressure or fear) into “I want to do this in English.”
What our clients need isn’t more lessons or harder work, but a different kind of experience.
Blue Noun holidays take English out of the classroom and place it back into everyday life. Clients practise English through real conversations, shared activities, cultural experiences, and time spent together. Confidence grows naturally as English becomes part of living, not something being tested or fixed.
Everyone’s role is to hold that space carefully, developing language ability as a by-product of meaningful experience rather than formal instruction.
Know Your Role
Quite unromantically, Blue Noun holidays work a bit like a manufacturing line: results happen because of the whole process, with different people contributing different parts.
This page is here to help you place yourself inside the system.
An Example:
I often bring in a pronunciation coach whose work pairs beautifully with a songwriting workshop.
The pronunciation coach focuses very precisely on physical aspects of speech — mouth position, vowel sounds, and the mechanics that often feel unfamiliar or uncomfortable for learners. The songwriting workshop, by contrast, uses rhyme, rhythm, and creativity to help clients use those same sounds with confidence and ease.
Each role is deliberately distinct. If the pronunciation coach were to move into creative facilitation, or the songwriting coach were to zone in on correcting all pronunciation, neither would be fully doing their own job.
Blue Noun holidays work because of this mix. Results come from different people contributing their different strengths at different moments, not from everyone trying to do everything.
Being a Conversation Person
If you are not an ELT teacher, you have been invited to join us because you bring an extraordinary life skill, experience, or way of seeing the world that I want to share with my client(s).
Your job is not to teach English.
You are one of the people the client will practise real conversation with. That means:
- You don’t correct language.
- You hold space for the client to speak.
Often, I frame these sessions as interviews, because asking questions in English is harder than answering them. You may find yourself speaking more than the client at times — that’s fine. Ask them questions too, and follow any tangents.
Tangents are FINE. (Tangents are the goal).
Much 2nd language comes from watching someone’s mouth, hands and body language. That can feel a bit intense if you are not used to it.
Please:
- Speak clearly
- Speak a little more slowly than you would with friends
- Give people space to find their word or sentence. Only help if they seem stuck/frustrated.
Being a Workshop Leader
Workshop leaders share a skill or experience rather than delivering a lesson. To avoid reinventing the wheel, I invite workshop leaders to design flexible workshops that can be reused.
Workshops we run include:
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Songwriting
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Sauerkraut making
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Journalling
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Job interview skills
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Crafts and art-making
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Pronunciation
It’s common for me to stack workshops — for example, moving from an intense interview workshop into a playful craft session (or vice versa).
Selling Your Own Tickets
You are almost always welcome to sell your own tickets alongside a Blue Noun workshop to supplement income. If you do:
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You keep all ticket income
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You agree not to cancel if ticket sales are low
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Events must be adults-only and shared with friends-of-friends rather than the general public
I’m happy to:
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Share your event on Blue Noun socials
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Help design a flyer
Just ask.
Being an ELT Person
Most clients arrive with multiple language areas we could work on. We don’t try to tackle everything at once — it’s overwhelming and counterproductive.
At the start of each holiday, I set:
- One broad experiential goal (e.g. enjoying speaking, feeling confident, presenting ideas)
- Two or three language focuses, often things like:
- will / going to
- present perfect vs past simple
- softening language when making suggestions
These are the threads I hold across the week, alongside anything the client expresses confusion about.
You are welcome to bring articles, games, prompts or activities – and we have lots at the hub too.
The aim is fluency through supported and directed conversation, not grammatical deep-dives.
Trust me to coordinate the whole process.
If You Are Used to ELT Classrooms
Some things do still apply:
- Aim for roughly 70/30 client-to-teacher talk time.
- Generosity with space, silence, and pauses matters.
Some things are deliberately different:
- Do not rush the client through any preprepared material. If you achieve 1/10th of what you planned, it is truly fine.
- We avoid over-teaching. This is not a place to “fix” everything. Their English is not broken (see our Wonky English PDF).
Wages
- Conversation support (when I am present): £15/hour
- ELT-trained support (happy to work independently): £20–£25/hour
- Workshops:
- £40/hour, or
- £100 per morning/afternoon (3 hours – feel free to include good breaks or lunch).
Materials budgets must be approved in advance.
We have business liability insurance that covers your work with us.
In the event of the client being unwell on the day, we pay 50% of your fee.
Other Perks
As part of Team Blue Noun, you have access to:
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Use of the space once per year for your own private event or workshop (adults only; friends-of-friends rather than wide public). This is especially useful for big lunches or small private workshops.
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Occasional spare event tickets I’ve already bought for clients but can’t use — these are offered first in the Blue Noun WhatsApp group.
Boundaries are Healthy
Working closely with clients during a holiday can create a particularly strong bond.
Let’s look at a couple of situations that may arise.
Oversharing
People often open up more than they expect — about confidence, identity, work, or past experiences with English.
You decide how much of yourself you share. My intention is to create a space where you can show up as yourself, while still maintaining healthy professional boundaries.
If you’d like support with this, ask me.
Pitching & Poaching
Please understand that bringing each client into Blue Noun carries a significant invisible cost: many hours of marketing, communication, trust-building, and relationship work that happens long before a holiday begins. That work is mine.
For this reason, your time with clients must not be used to promote your own offers, courses, or alternatives to a Blue Noun holiday.
Doing so shifts the relationship from support to extraction and undermines both the client experience and the sustainability of the business. Clients should never feel pitched to while they are here.
If a client would like to work with you independently, that route goes through me. I will pass on contact details when appropriate.
Self-promotion to clients or to the Blue Noun audience is a breach of trust. If it happens, we will not continue working together. If you do have an ELT business, I do have other ways to support you.
Access, Health & Reliability
Blue Noun aims to be an equal opportunities employer. This includes actively supporting collaborators who live with long-term health conditions, including fluctuating capacity,
We understand that energy, health, and availability are not always predictable (for anyone!), and we’re committed to working with you to make roles sustainable and beneficial to you.
That said, reliability matters for our clients and for the wider team. While some medical issues arise suddenly, if you suspect you may be unable to fulfil a session or workshop, please let us know as early as you can.
Early communication allows us to adapt, support you, and protect the client experience — last-minute cancellations are much harder to manage for everyone.
We’re always open to honest conversations about capacity, adjustments, and what good work looks like for you.
A Note on the Bigger Picture
Blue Noun has been in Crieff for six years. It’s been a slow, long journey, and only now is it really beginning to put down roots.
From the beginning, my intention has been to create meaningful, well-held employment opportunities for local people — a strong network that rewards talent without asking you to dilute who you are.
I want you to share your work and your voice without filtering or compromise.
If you’d like to support Blue Noun, the most valuable thing you can do is help with visibility: share the work, talk about it, pass it on. From homestay hosts to clients, visibility matters.
I’m genuinely grateful you’re here, and I’m always happy to support you in your work, music, art, teaching, or anything else, if I can.
