🌿 Mindful Learning with Francis Gilbert
Conversations and ideas for creative, compassionate education
✨ Welcome
I set up the Mindful Learning podcast as an informal, honest space to reflect on key ideas in education, creativity, and life. As a writer, teacher and Head of Subject at Goldsmiths, I’ve spent years thinking about how we can teach and learn more mindfully — not just in theory, but in everyday conversations, classrooms, and relationships.
This podcast isn’t polished or scripted. It’s real. I record most episodes on Teams or Zoom — just talking, listening, thinking aloud with people I admire: students, teachers, colleagues, friends, and family. We explore how learning actually happens — emotionally, socially, reflectively — and how we can create more space for care, curiosity and creative risk-taking in education.
It’s part of my wider Mindful Learning project, which includes books, blogs, teaching resources and mentoring. But the podcast has a special place: it’s where I let ideas breathe, ask difficult questions, and celebrate the messy, meaningful parts of education.
You can listen via this site or via YouTube.
🎧 The Podcast
Listen to honest, unscripted conversations about education, creativity, and life.
Each episode is recorded informally — often on Teams or Zoom — and captures the flow of thought, laughter, disagreement, and discovery that makes learning truly alive.
Five Key Things I Learned About Mental Health First Aid
This week, I completed the Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) course at Goldsmiths, led by the brilliant Alicia Nagar from MHFA England. It was one of the most powerful and practically useful bits of training I’ve done in years. In just two days, I gained a deeper understanding of how to support people experiencing mental distress — whether that’s anxiety, depression, self-harm, psychosis, or trauma — and how to do so with compassion, clarity, and strong boundaries. In my latest blog, I share five key takeaways from the course, including the importance of using thoughtful, non-stigmatising language, recognising how inequality shapes mental health outcomes, and using the ALGEE framework to offer support without overstepping your role. We also explored how mental health first aiders can respond effectively to crisis situations and how vital it is to look after our own wellbeing too. I’ve trained in mindfulness and therapy, but this course offered something unique: a grounded, structured, and deeply humane approach to supporting others. I’m incredibly grateful to Alicia and to Goldsmiths for making it possible. I’d encourage anyone — especially those working in education — to take part. Read the full blog for more reflections and practical insights.
✍️ Why “Mindful Learning”?
Because education is too often rushed, reduced, and reactive.
Because we need spaces to pause, reflect, and reconnect.
Because learning isn’t just what happens in classrooms — it happens in bodies, in conversations, in the quiet moments of truth-telling.
This project builds on the ideas explored in The Mindful English Teacher and The Mindful Creative Writing Teacher, but opens the door to wider voices, topics, and forms.
🤝 Work with Me
I offer mentoring, talks, workshops, and consultancy for educators, parents, writers, and organisations.
→ sir@francisgilbert.co.uk
🧠Stay Connected
Subscribe to the podcast, read the latest posts, and follow the journey.