"Celebrating 50 years of changing lives since 1975"
Neuro Linguistic Programming is turning 50, and to celebrate its 50th anniversary, John Grinder and Richard Bandler have agreed to join this unique NLP 50th Anniversary Celebration, hosted jointly by Michael Carroll (NLP Academy) and John La Valle (Pure NLP), taking place via livestream on 27th September 2025.
In this unique NLP 50th Anniversary Celebration event, the ‘original’ co-creators of NLP, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, will share their insights about their unique collaboration from half a century ago, which paved the way for Neuro Linguistic Programming to become the global phenomenon it has become.
The creation of NLP is a fascinating subject which through the years, has been embellished with folklore, woven into a narrative of stories, which whilst being good stories, do not accurately reflect the heady days of Santa Cruz when John Grinder and Richard Bandler came together and built a series of models which went on to become a global phenomenon.
The original co-creators of NLP, John Grinder and Richard Bandler, will tell the real story of NLP’s creation, focusing on their work together in the 1970s, the modelling projects they undertook, and their fearless attitude in how they operated, how they taught others in the different groups they set up to test the patterns and how they coded the patterns for publication in the books they co authored.
This NLP 50th Anniversary Celebration marks the publication of NLP’s first book, the Structure of Magic 1, co-authored by Bandler and Grinder, first published in 1975. The Structure of Magic 1, provides detailed and rich descriptions of the syntax of language for promoting personal change and choice for people, where previously choice was lacking. The work is the core of NLP, primarily modelled from Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir, with influences from Noam Chomsky’s transformational grammar in the coding to form the model.
It was indeed heady times back in 1975, Structure of Magic 1, brought about a revolution in therapy and change work, with Gregory Bateson saying the following in his forward ‘Grinder and Bandler have confronted the problems which we confronted then and this series is the result. They have tools which we did not have - or did not see how to use. They have succeeded in making linguistics into a base for theory and simultaneously into a tool for therapy. This gives them a double control over the psychiatric phenomena, and they have done something which, as I see it today, we were foolish to miss.' And this is what we are celebrating, the genius of Grinder and Bandler and the field they co- created.
This event is designed to focus purely on the creation of NLP, to tell the story of NLP’s creation, and not its separation, and to explore the richness inherent its history, and to enjoy the personalities that co-created it.
Only Grinder and Bandler know the real story of NLP, and in this event, and for the first time ever, they will be sharing their own perspectives on its creation at this 50th Anniversary Celebration.
