• 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…

  • 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…