• Honouring the Humanity of an Exceptional Student: Zhe Wang

    The conclusion of the trial into the tragic death of Zhe Wang has brought renewed sadness to our community, but it also reminds us of the importance of remembering who she was beyond these events. Zhe was a gentle, attentive presence on the MA Creative Writing and Education, someone whose calmness and kindness shaped the…

  • Five Things We Should Know About Irish Identity Abroad

    In this Mindful Learning podcast, Francis Gilbert talks with MA Creative Writing and Education graduate Conor Patchell about his remarkable dissertation film on Irish identity abroad. Conor reflects on the stories he inherited from his grandfather about discrimination in England, the resilience of earlier generations, and the dramatic shift from suspicion to celebration that Irish…

  • Therapy

    Introduction I believe that stories, mindfulness, and imagination can help us heal. Alongside my work as a writer and educator, I am also a trained and accredited Breathworks Mindfulness Teacher and a Human Givens therapist-in-training, integrating evidence-based psychological approaches with creative and compassionate practice. My Qualifications Breathworks Mindfulness Teacher (Accredited) I trained and gained full…

  • The Healing Dance: Human Givens, Catharsis, and the Power of Stories

    After more than thirty years of teaching, writing, and listening to people share their work and their worries, I’ve come to believe that stories don’t just entertain or instruct us; they heal us. In this post, I explore how narrative and imagination can restore emotional balance, drawing on my recent training in the Human Givens…

  • If I Were to Hold a Retreat for Entitled Men

    🔥 If I were to hold a retreat for entitled men, I’d start with a fire. Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind (2025) burns with quiet devastation. It’s not a heist film but a parable — a portrait of what happens when unmet needs twist imagination into delusion. Drawing on the Human Givens approach and ideas from…

  • Writing Among Books and Roses: Five Lessons from the British Library and a South London Garden

    This October, as autumn mist drifted across London, our MA Creative Writing and Education students embarked on two journeys that revealed how creativity grows wherever attention is cultivated — one in the British Library, the other in a South London garden. At the British Library, students began by getting their Reader’s Passes, a small but…

  • Five Things I Learnt from Running My Workshop at Ecology in the Art Curriculum event

    Begin with breathing, end with agency Our recent CPD, run by the British Ecological Society, the Centre for Arts and Learning, the MA in Art and Ecology, and the PGCE Art and Design programme at Goldsmiths, brought together teachers, artists, and ecologists to explore how mindfulness and creative pedagogy can help students reconnect with the…

  • Five Things the New Are You on Slide 8 Yet? Report Can Teach Us About Learning in Schools

    In this new episode of the Mindful Learning Podcast, I speak with Dr Sarah Pearce and Dr Anna Traianou about their powerful new report for the National Education Union, Are You on Slide 8 Yet?. The title comes from one teacher’s chilling experience: senior leaders checking through classroom doors to ensure every class was on…

  • The Lady from the Sea: Five Lessons We’ve Lost in Translation

    Simon Stone’s new adaptation of Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea at the Bridge Theatre, starring Alicia Vikander and Andrew Lincoln, is exquisite and psychologically nuanced — yet something vital has ebbed away. In translating Ibsen’s Fruen fra havet into modern English realism, the production trades myth for therapy, danger for empathy. This article explores…

  • Five Big Wake-Up Calls from the New Curriculum Reports

    Two major reports have shaken up the education debate in 2025. The National Education Union’s Are You on Slide 8 Yet? (Traianou, Pearce, Stevenson & Brady, 2025) lays bare the lived realities of teachers trapped in the machinery of standardisation. The government’s Curriculum and Assessment Review: Interim Report (Francis, 2025) goes further than expected, acknowledging…

  • Four things the novels of Patrick White can teach us

    Patrick White remains Australia’s only Nobel Prize winner in Literature, yet today his novels are often more admired than read. Fifty years after his Nobel award, critics such as Reuben Mackey (2023) note the curious neglect of a writer who once defined the Australian canon. In this blog I revisit White’s fiction through my own…

  • Five Things English Teachers Can Teach Us About Reading, Writing, and Living

    I recorded this episode of the Mindful Learning Podcast with Anthony Cockerill, director of the National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE), because I believe English teachers have so much to teach us beyond the classroom. Our conversation was a chance to explore what reading, writing, and language mean for all of us as…

  • The Mindful Learning Podcast: 7 Things You Should Know About Therapy

    If you’re reading this on Instagram, please paste the link into your browser to access the full article. In the latest Mindful Learning Podcast I spoke with therapist Bradley Riddell about what therapy is really like. We explored why therapy is never one-size-fits-all, why humour and trust matter, and how clients often already carry the…

  • Five Things I Learnt About Life and Death from the Extraordinary New Film Late Shift

    I watched Late Shift (Heldin) at the Alnwick Playhouse and left feeling that everyone in the audience had witnessed life and death together. The film follows Floria, a nurse on the night shift in a Swiss hospital, navigating impossible workloads, patients in pain, angry relatives, and small flashes of compassion. It is both realistic and…

  • Five Things I Learned from watching Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon

    Sitting with my 25-year-old son in the Duke of York’s cinema in Brighton, I was transported back to my student days in the 1980s. Watching Barry Lyndon together felt like a full-circle moment. We stayed near Devil’s Dyke, walking its chalk slopes in the evening light, and the film seemed to seep into the landscape…

  • Seven Things I Learnt from Land of the Free? Trump’s War on Press, Protest and Academic Freedom

    What does freedom of expression really mean in 2025? On August 5th, I attended a deeply thought-provoking event hosted by Index on Censorship at St John’s Church, Waterloo, where my wife Erica Wagner was one of the speakers. The panel launched the new Index issue titled Land of the Free? and gathered journalists, editors, and…

  • Seven Things Every Parent Should Know About Teachers and Their Children’s Learning

    As a teacher, parent, and author of The Mindful English Teacher, I have seen first-hand how much pressure modern education places on families, and how little space there often is for listening, creativity, and emotional understanding. I created this podcast and companion blog to open up a more compassionate conversation between parents and teachers. Speaking…

  • Five Things Caves Can Teach Us About Our Lives on the Surface of Things

    This summer I descended into the Postojna caves in Slovenia and came back with more than just photos. I wrote a poem and a reflection on what caves can teach us about the surface of our lives: about time, silence, the unconscious, and the power of slowness. From Plato’s shadows to Blake’s infernos, from Freud’s…