20 Group Activities That Will Give Your Team New Perspectives

Toronto is a city that has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to inventive and productive team-building concepts. Here, groups can gain a new perspective on old obstacles with engaging activities that promote original thinking along with good old-fashioned communication. From problem-solving on a scavenger hunt to energizing your group at paintball, here are the best team-building activities in Toronto.

For the artsy types

1. Sing it loud and proud at a private karaoke night at Bar Mordecai

One of Toronto’s top cocktail bars—right in the thick of the Dundas Street West strip—doubles as a superb destination for karaoke. Visitors to the basement at Bar Mordecai find a colourful environment of four separate karaoke rooms, each lavishly decorated with a different music theme—settle into the Elvis Room, the Vegas Room, the Jolene Room or the Pop Room. A larger outer bar, the Green Room, is a welcome retreat between vocal sessions.

2. Think on your feet with an improv class at The Second City

Business professionals can improve their communication skills—and maybe get to know each other a little bit better at the same time—through storytelling and public speaking at the largest improvisational and sketch-comedy school in the world. The Second City training centre will help your team connect through laughter, based on your specific corporate culture and objectives, strengthening interactivity, agility and sales-effectiveness.

3. Indulge your inner Picasso at the Paint Cabin

Add a dash of colour to your team-building event with a session at the Paint Cabin. Groups get their creative juices flowing, along with a few drinks, cheered on by visual-arts instructors. The Leslieville site accommodates from five to 15 people, while the Liberty Village location can handle up to 100 guests. Workshops can be as varied and as custom-tailored as you like, as your team take to their canvases, create wooden signs or explore print-making. You can also break out the blacklight paint for a glow-in-the-dark DJ paint party. A Financial District location is set to open for Winter 2025.

4. Get your hands dirty with a ceramics class

At the Clay With Me Richmond Street pottery studio in Downtown Toronto, groups of four to 75 people can come together to create something special. At customizable team events, guests learn about the art of pottery and receive instruction in wheel-throwing or hand-building techniques. The studio will then fire all the ceramics you made, which will be ready for pickup a few weeks later.

For the problem solvers

5. Tour the town on a group scavenger hunt with Urban Capers

Historical, multicultural, social, creative and competitive, the hosted tours by Urban Capers Scavenger Hunt are a couple of hours well spent for groups of 10 to 500. Players answer tricky questions and complete creative challenges before time runs out. Discover the unsung secrets of the St. Lawrence Market,  the whisky tales of the Distillery District, the mysteries of the Royal Ontario Museum and the hidden history lurking Downtown.

8. Sharpen your sleuthing skills with a murder mystery

Smoking Gun Entertainment is an improvisation-based theatre company with one of the longest-running interactive murder-mystery shows in Canada. You question the suspects, examine the evidence and crack the case, interacting with a troupe of very colourful characters who circulate and gossip, reveal secrets and drop clues. This intriguing whodunnit experience also includes cocktails and dinner. 

9. Meet challenges and solve riddles—like a secret agent

Solve a mystery through an escape room-style urban game on the streets of downtown with EscapeShow Toronto. The plot is tailor-made a.k.a. personalized to your group, so participants are woven into the storyline and interact with live actors. The thing is: You won’t be able to tell the actors from just the regular people on the street! A bespoke mega game designed for groups of 100 or more is also available.

10. Get everybody out for an engaging and energizing game night

Find a mix of entertainment, bonding, learning and camaraderie with the disrupters at It’s Game Night. Specializing in unique interactive antics, with facilitators that are with you every step of the way, they promise fun and games during work hours or after, at your workplace or at the event space of your choice. Go head-to-head with your workmates with Game Shows, Office Olympics, Mafia Mysteries and even a Mobile Escape Room.

For the sports lovers

11. Level the playing field with a bocce-golf game hybrid at Lob

At Lob in Riverside, groups can bond over a competitive and fun game in which players toss balls down a series of nine different tracks toward a marker, trying to knock each other out of play. Perfect for company meetings, entertaining clients, fundraising or product launches, Lob is like a backyard turf game with a built-in pub, plus burgers and fries. Corporate-party add-ons include medal packages and celebratory cake. 

12. Energize your team with a trip to Sgt. Splatter’s Project Paintball

Burn stress through movement at this paintball palace, a combat zone of ramshackle buildings and decrepit cars. Canada’s largest indoor paintball field has been heeding the battle cry for more than 25 years, unleashing the warriors within this 3,250-square-metre space spread over two storeys. Open 364 days of the year.

13. Reinstate recess at Toronto’s largest indoor adult playground

Groups get in touch with their inner child at Pursuit OCR, testing their speed and strength through climbing and crawling, jumping and plunging. The team-building obstacle course winds through itself, an open-concept, 2,800-square-metre industrial space, offering almost 20 different challenges involving monkey bars, a climbing wall, aerial ropes and a foam pit. You don’t have to be an athlete, but it helps.

14. Settle a few scores on a glow-in-the-dark battlefield

Archery Circuit is safe and fun, and best of all—painless. Snipe and shoot your colleagues playing combat archery tag using foam-tipped arrows in an immersive black light arena. Simply choose from an assortment of bows, don face masks and arm guards and helmets. All the equipment for archery, nerf blasters or blacklight dodgeball is provided, along with orientation. Suits from six to 30 players.

For the foodies

17. Kick it up a notch in the kitchen at Le Dolci

Pastry, bread, macarons, croissants, pies, scones, cinnamon buns, doughnuts, cupcakes—the menu is long at Le Dolci Bakery & Culinary Classroom in the Junction neighbourhood. Fun and easy-to-follow classes in a variety of culinary arts educate and entertain groups in the making of their favourite sweets. There’s even cake and cookie decorating, as well as a class that focuses on guten-free and vegan dietary needs. The best part? You get to taste your wares, of course.

18. Send the team’s taste buds on a sightseeing culinary adventure

A food tour is a great way to venture out into the city, exploring the delicious and multicultural culinary delights of the various food-forward parts of town. Sip and savour some of the best food Toronto has to offer, whether it’s a dash through Kensington Market, a tasting exploration of Chinatown or Little Italy, a walk through St. Lawrence Market or a pub-crawl to the city’s top breweries. Bonding through eating is a ritual as old as time itself.

19. Shake up your cocktail smarts with a mixology class

The distillery and taproom at Nickel 9 Distillery make for great event spaces, but the real party revs up in their cocktail classes. It doesn’t matter what your mixing skill level is, the bartenders will guide you through the basics, as you and your colleagues create three unique cocktails, using Nickel 9’s premium spirits and bitters. Enjoy creative and spirited camaraderie, from the shaking to the garnishing.