• Five Things I Learnt from Tobias Hill’s Writing

    I met Tobias Hill in 1999, in a London literary world that felt alive, exploratory, not yet fully digitised. Very different from now in 2026. We stood outside a sealed Underground entrance in Kentish Town, a space that had quietly taken on another life, hidden, ambiguous, charged. Tobias was drawn to it, not for spectacle,…

  • Two New Roles on the AHRC Creative Writing Together Project at Goldsmiths

    I’m delighted to be recruiting for two roles on our AHRC funded Creative Writing Together project at Goldsmiths, University of London. The project explores how creative writing can support reflection, wellbeing, and dialogue across generations, working with schools, community groups, and writers across London. We are looking for a Research Assistant (.5 FTE) and a…

  • Five Things FE Teachers Can Learn from Small Scale Research

    As part of the British Library’s Learning Skills Research Network, Debbie Bogard and I co-led an online Learning and Skills Research Network session exploring research methods and data collection in Further Education. At first I joked that research methods might not be the most thrilling topic. Yet the discussion quickly showed the opposite. When research…

  • Why Creative Writing Together Matters, A £1m Research Project for Families, Schools and Communities

    I am delighted to share that Professor Tom Dobson and I, working with an exceptional interdisciplinary team, have secured close to £1 million in funding for a three year research project, Creative Writing Together. This major award supports an ambitious investigation into how creative writing can strengthen relationships between children, parents, teachers and communities, and…

  • No Other Choice, five things we can learn about men, family, and being at war with the system

    I recently watched Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, and I cannot stop thinking about it. It is a film that makes you laugh, then makes you question the laughter. In a cinema full of people, there were audible laughs during scenes of murder, not because they were comic in any simple way, but because they…

  • Ecologies of Practice and Learning (Book chapter)

    How can creative research help young people become agents of environmental change? This post highlights a chapter I co-authored with Anna Stewart in the edited collection Ecologies in Practice and Learning: Arts Interventions in the Earth Crisis. The book brings together arts educators, researchers and practitioners exploring how learning, creativity and ecological action intersect in…

  • Six ways to engage local communities through creative writing at St Mary’s Church, Walthamstow

    St Mary’s Churchyard in Walthamstow is more than a restored historic site. It is a living commons, a place where gardening, conversation, memory, and creativity quietly intertwine. On a January afternoon, we gathered there with students from the MA Creative Writing and Education at Goldsmiths for a community writing session that showed just how powerful…

  • Five Ways to Teach Creative Writing to Teenagers 

    Forgive the comic strip. It is there simply to convey the energy, playfulness and creative momentum of what was a genuinely joyful afternoon of creative writing at Goldsmiths. Recently we welcomed a brilliant group of Danish teenagers to campus for a creative writing workshop, led by their teacher Margit from DATE and NATE. They arrived…

  • To Be Hamnet or Hamlet; that is the question — Seven lessons I learnt from watching Hamnet

    To Be Hamnet or Hamlet; that is the question Seven lessons I learnt from watching Hamnet NB: This review contains spoilers. What if Hamlet is not just a tragedy about revenge, but an unfinished conversation with grief? I watched Hamnet at my local cinema, Crouch End Picturehouse, and came away unsettled, moved, and intellectually provoked.…

  • Free Human Givens Therapy Sessions, A Practical and Supervised Offer

    I’m currently offering a small number of free Human Givens therapy sessions as part of the final stage of my professional training. This is a practical, solution focused approach that does not require you to talk about childhood trauma unless you want to. The work is often closer to coaching and focuses on challenges you…

  • Six Things I Learnt About Home Making from the Film Sentimental Value

    Six things we can learn about home making from Sentimental Value What if home is not a place at all, but something we make moment by moment with other people? In Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, a Norwegian house becomes a vessel for memory, trauma, silence, and art. The film asks difficult questions about listening, inheritance,…

  • Five Things I Learnt About Winning from Marty Supreme

    What does it really mean to win? I went to see Marty Supreme expecting a sports movie, or at least a film about ambition. What I came away with was something darker and more unsettling. A portrait of winning at all costs, and the quiet wreckage left behind when success becomes the only value left…

  • Analysis and Study Guide: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

    This new ‘Analysis and Study Guide to A Christmas Carol’ is written to help GCSE students genuinely understand Dickens’ novella and write confident, high-level exam responses. It draws directly on my experience teaching ‘A Christmas Carol’ for over twenty years in secondary classrooms, alongside my work as an academic at Goldsmiths where I research the…

  • Reading Children’s Fairytales: Inside the Gingerbread House (Chapter)

    It’s been a real privilege to contribute to Reading Children’s Fairytales: Inside the Gingerbread House (Routledge), a genuinely collaborative and intellectually generous volume edited by an outstanding team with strong roots in Goldsmiths, University of London. The book is edited by Dr Mette Lindahl-Wise and Dr Harry Oulton, both PhD graduates of Goldsmiths’ Education department,…

  • The Oxford Handbook of Creativity and Education (Chapter)

    I’m pleased to share that I’ve contributed a chapter to The Oxford Handbook of Creativity and Education (Oxford University Press, 2025), a major international reference work bringing together leading research on creativity in education from across the world. The handbook explores how creativity is understood, supported, and constrained across educational systems, with chapters examining policy,…

  • 7 Ways For Teachers to become Researchers

    In December 2025, I delivered an online session for FE lecturers as part of the British Library Research Network, working with Debbie Bogard of the British Library. We explored seven things every teacher should know about research, using the original Alice in Wonderland manuscript as a metaphor for how inquiry really works. Research is never…

  • 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…