Author Archives: Charlie Gibson

Data and case studies are now in, from the hubs that delivered our Creative English for Infant Health programme. Across the board, it is becoming clear that we need to respond to the issue of infant mortality by including a range of family members in […]

How do we measure the impact of a project that is based in the arts? It’s not easy. From 2023-2024, we delivered our Creative English for Cardiovascular Health programme with 586 individuals in 10 different community locations across Birmingham, funded by the local Public Health […]

As part of their COVID-19 recovery plan, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets  Council decided to look to faith groups as delivery partners to improve health outcomes across the borough. As trusted partners through our work with the Tower Hamlets Inter Faith Forum, the borough’s […]

FaithAction have recently been awarded funding by Birmingham City Council to deliver our community-based ESOL programme, Creative English, with places of worship, faith-based and community organisations within Birmingham. Designed through Dr Anne Smith’s PhD research into belonging, Creative English carries the tagline ‘laugh your way […]

When we first went into lockdown last year, I’ll be honest, figuring out how to run drama sessions online wasn’t very high on my list of priorities. I was more immediately concerned with how I would access the books I needed to write my MA […]

This experience that no one could ever have imagined that the world would go through… it has really made a lot of people appreciate the small things in life, the really small things, you know? Seeing people’s faces again. Going out for a coffee with […]

‘I’m not depressed any more. I have friends. I go out of my house. This class has made the difference: learning with fun and friends!’ – Learner Not only are socially isolated individuals more prone to depression, loneliness also increases the likelihood of mortality by 26%. […]

Before I started working on FaithAction’s Creative English programme, I spent a year living and working as teacher of English as a foreign language in Italy. I had learnt a bit of Italian, having spent the previous two summers working at camps across the country […]

Anne and I recently attended a conference at Goldsmiths University of London titled ‘Welcome is a Radical Act: an action/reflection event on the arts and refugees.’ In all honesty I hadn’t really done any brain-engaged thinking about the title before we arrived—I suppose I was […]

This piece was written for the Theatre, Dance and Performance Training journal and was first published on their blog. This notion that the leader needs to be ‘in charge’ and ‘know all the answers’ is both dated and destructive… Fear leads to risk aversion. Risk […]