Here you'll find out what we're thinking and doing to support the arts, share learning across the health and social care sector and act on the climate crisis.

plastic waste in water with text Single use is no use. #ChooseToReuse

Blog

The Value Of Mentoring

29 Mar 2021
By 
Tanya Royer

When I was seventeen years old, I moved away from home to go to university in Victoria, British Columbia. Like most students in their first year, I was young and naïve, with next to nothing in terms of life experience. The shift from adolescence to adulthood involves considerable turbulence, both internal and external, and I was right in the eye of that storm. But I had no idea what was going on.

One evening, a dear friend of my family’s invited me to have dinner with her. This woman was a friend of my parents, and had known me from infancy. My guess is that she had decided that, as I was far from home, it might be an idea to check in on me. She was a practising nurse and visual artist.

Read more

The importance – and joy – of editing

17 Feb 2021
By 
Jessica Rose

It must have been my second day in the job as Editor at NHS Employers, back in 2006, when I picked up the error. I was proofreading what was then known as NHS Workforce Bulletin, the go-to resource for NHS HR managers, and spotted the health communicator’s nightmare. An article about public health had an embarrassing typo – ‘pubic health’. “Well,” said my manager, delighted. “You’ve just proven the value of having an editor on board.”

Read more
computer screen and coffee cup

6 approaches to try with your newsletters

14 Dec 2020

Social media is the reliably intriguing problem child of digital communications. At a strategic level, we tweak our content (article or video? Stories or Reels?) to surf the ever-changing features and algorithms, while day-to-day we can be quickly sidetracked by the febrile drama of Facebook comments and Twitterstorms. 

Yet newsletters are the real workhorses of digital communications. Week in, week out, they welcome newcomers, engage existing members, and catalyse people’s relationship with your organisation. Provided you get the tone and frequency levels of your newsletters right, your audience numbers will grow and grow. 

Read more
an email app shows notification for two unread emails

We Read celebrates first anniversary at the Writers' Room

14 Nov 2020
By 
Jessica Rose

Last month, in between lockdowns, We Read Book Club celebrated its first anniversary in person and on Zoom with guest author Leke Apena, author of ‘The Prophet Who Loved Her.

Founded by Thea Renee, the book club is a space for black and brown women to come together, read black and brown authors and talk about books and life. Thea started We Read back in 2019 with the idea of holding a regular social meet up with other women in the community, hosted in different people's homes. 

Read more
We Read group members

Lockdown 2 blues? Organisations and freelancers can get each other through this

3 Nov 2020
By 
Jessica Rose

It's November. We're about to go into a second lockdown and everyone is feeling a sense of foreboding. For those organisations that aren't in shutdown sectors, there's still the annual race to get reports published, campaigns launched and products online before Christmas. For individuals who are freelancing or running their own small businesses (SMEs) - whether this was something they were doing before the pandemic or something they've been pushed towards because of it - there's the fear that work won't come in, bills won't get paid and Christmas might as well be cancelled.

Read more