Innovative Team Building Activities For Corporate Retreats

Beyond the boardroom: activities to elevate your offsite

At Elsewhere, we’ve rewritten the team-building rulebook. Our corporate retreats aren’t about awkward icebreakers or forced fun- they’re about curiosity, challenge, and creativity.

We stay well away from generic team building activities. Generic isn’t pin-pointed. Generic isn’t about team performance.

Forget Lego building and candle-making, we design every experience in-house, built around one guiding principle: get your team out of their comfort zone, mix things up a bit, and watch what happens.

Here are nine of our most original team-building experiences- each one intentionally designed to shake things up, break down barriers, and bring people together in meaningful, memorable ways.

1. Master Chef: Farmyard Edition

Think Great British Bake Off meets Clarkson’s Farm—with added goat yoga.

Teams forage for ingredients, milk a real cow, churn butter, drive a tractor, collect eggs, make flatbreads, and (yes) coax a goat into a few downward dogs. Then it’s time to build a fire and cook up a winning omelette—judged by Elsewhere’s own Theo Michaels, a MasterChef semi-finalist.

This is our most loved flagship activity because it combines creativity, chaos, and campfire cooking with just the right amount of competitive spice.

Due to the requirement of a cow and goats- the Farmyard version is only available at Hill House Norfolk. (Non-farmyard animal versions are run at other sites).

Key themes: Creativity, collaboration, practical problem-solving, culinary chaos.

Master Chef: Farmyard Edition - yes, you even get to milk a cow

2. The Tea Heist

It’s the 1920s, and your mission is simple: steal the world’s most precious tea from an eccentric aristocrat’s estate. You’ll need to plan your route, bribe informants, dodge guards, and make your getaway—without spilling a single drop.

It’s playful, theatrical, and surprisingly strategic.

Key themes: Imagination, role-play, logical thinking, team decision-making, general mischief.

The Tea Heist: Dial in your best police problem solving skills

3. Survive Amersham!

This is what Bear Grylls would design if he had a sense of humour. Think CB radios, code-breaking, building shelters, lighting fires with no matches, creating a flag from bed sheets, and catching fish (after snapping a required fish-selfie). Oh, and did we mention rescuing stranded teammates who are literally stuck in the mud?

No tech. No shortcuts. Just nature, adrenaline, and a whole lot of laughter.

Key themes: Resilience, creativity under pressure, trust, team grit, fish.

Survive Hurley: An infamous fish-selfie before gutting it and cooking it (no matches allowed)

4. Bomb Squad

This one gets the heart pumping. Teams must deactivate a live bomb scenario using only a mysterious briefcase, a set of wirecutters, and a nerve-wracking set of clues to decypher. One wrong move, and the whole mission goes up in smoke (not literally, but you’ll feel it).

And as a final twist, one of your group is the enemy spy. Teams need to figure out who it is and interrogate them to locate the final bomb. Teams who get there first are rewarded with Churchill’s favourite gin and tonic, served in tin mugs.

It’s fast, intense, and demands clarity under pressure. No shouting. No second chances.

Key themes: Focus, clear communication, code-breaking, leadership under stress, gin.

5. Spaced Out

You’ve landed on a mysterious new planet. Communications are down. Your spaceship’s wrecked. One person’s locked in the escape pod. You’ve got 90 minutes to make it back to orbit—or you’re toast.

This futuristic simulation throws teams into a sci-fi survival scenario requiring top-notch communication, fast decision-making, and calm under pressure.

Key themes: Strategy, crisis management, collective problem-solving.

Spaced Out: Vehicle Manoeuvres In The Dark

6. Murder at Hill House

Welcome to the Elsewhere mansion. There’s been a murder. And your team? You’re the suspects, the detectives, and the audience. Over the next 2.5 hours, you’ll piece together clues, uncover secrets, and interrogate each other—all while navigating plot twists worthy of Agatha Christie.

We’ve written the whole thing in-house, with layers of corporate satire, office in-jokes, and just the right amount of scandal.

Key themes: Role-play, lateral thinking, storytelling, team chemistry.

7. Spray Cans at Dawn

Time to swap laptops for spray cans. With guidance from our local street artists, your team will create a collaborative graffiti masterpiece—expressing your company’s vision, values, or whatever feels most urgent to say.

It’s messy, hands-on, and surprisingly emotional. Plus, you get to take the canvas home.

Key themes: Creativity, self-expression, shared vision, breaking the mould.

Spray Cans at Dawn: Everyone loves messing around with paint

8. Off the Grid

No phones. No internet. Just your team, a map, and a cryptic set of instructions that may or may not involve climbing trees, deciphering natural clues, and solving logic puzzles hidden in the woods.

It’s a detox for your brain—and a reset for your team dynamics.

Key themes: Problem-solving, presence, digital detox.

9. Classic Sports Day

Nostalgia meets rivalry. We bring back the egg-and-spoon races, tug of war, sack races, and a few Elsewhere twists—like synchronised space hopper sprints and costume relays.

The energy is high, the laughs are loud, and it’s often the most talked-about part of the retreat.

Key themes: Playfulness, competition, team spirit, joy.

A Classic Sports Day: Lots of vintage nostalgia

So… why does this all matter?

Because the best team building doesn’t feel like team building. It feels like playing, exploring, risking, and having a laugh. It opens up new sides of people. It gives quiet voices space to lead. It allows relationships to reset and cultures to shift.

Energy is built in moments like these and everyone is buzzing afterwards.

At Elsewhere, we design those moments from scratch. Every activity above was created by us, tested tens of times in the field (sometimes in the mud), and tailored to bring teams back stronger, sharper, and more connected.

Ready to ditch the boardroom and do something else entirely?

Let’s build an offsite around your team, your goals, and the kind of experience people talk about for months afterwards.

Start planning your Elsewhere experience today.