Belonging

This week, we witnessed Mamoudou Gassama, a migrant from Mali, hit the headlines – with an extraordinary video of him scaling four stories up the side of a building in Paris to rescue a four-year-old child dangling from a balcony. This remarkable feat of resourcefulness […]

Next week is Mental Health Awareness Week. What has this got to do with faith communities? Well, more than you might think. If one in four people experience some kind of difficulty with their mental health in any given year, then there’s no way that […]

This week we had the pleasure of speaking to Fatemah Al-Ansare, the Events and Publicity Manager for the Iraqi Welfare Association, a community hub in Wembley. The IWA has a large focus on welfare – running our own Creative English programme plus fitness groups and […]

At dinner last week with a number of friends from Eastern Europe, our conversation moved from the nerve agent attack in Salisbury to what patriotism meant to us and who felt they belonged and wanted to stay in the UK.  My dinner companions were all […]

The Government has released its long-awaited integration strategy, developed methodically behind the scenes with the close involvement of civil society organisations – including providers of community-based English programmes like Creative English. As Eric Pickles, former Secretary of State for Communities, said when the 2010 coalition […]

This week, we had the pleasure of speaking to Saira Neam, Manager of EASA, a community hub in Bradford. Based in the centre of town for the last 30 years, the organisation has its finger on the pulse of the community and its needs, specifically […]

We recently had the pleasure of speaking to Julie D’Souza Walsh from The Furnival, a community hub in Sheffield. Working largely with young people through the mentoring and therapeutic project ‘Cellar Space’, they have branched out more recently to include Creative English, after school clubs, […]

Barking and Dagenham Somali Women’s Association (B&D SWA) is a registered charity that empowers and enables women both in the London borough and surrounding areas. It offers services to women from a variety of backgrounds – all women in the area are welcome. As well as running FaithAction’s Creative English classes, […]

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 […]

Teachers all over the country are trying to find ways to add the government’s ‘British values’ to their lessons. The British values are: democracy the rule of law individual liberty mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs and for those […]