hearth consultancy
home for education, activism, research, transformative justice & healing
home for education, activism, research, transformative justice & healing
Here are some of our recent projects, including educational spaces & workshops, data mapping, evaluation, EDI/DEI work & a feasibility study
In 2025, we led an evaluation of the Culturally Integrated Family Approach domestic abuse programme, led by Barnet Council and designed and delivered by RISE Mutual CIC. We evaluated the impact and effectiveness of the programme across 10 London boroughs through interviews with stakeholders, staff, service users and victim-survivors.
The evaluation was designed with trauma-informed principles and co-production at its heart. We created spaces to reflect on the transformative work being done through the CIFA programme and produced a comprehensive evaluation report.
Flow.Walk.Drag. is a walking tour through Liverpool L8 and Margate, led by drag artists as microorganisms (cholera & E. coli). Using participatory, community-centred methodologies, we led a deep dive into hidden water histories, turning sewage into spectacle on Margate’s shores.
In 2025, we ran community workshops and collaborated with scientists, drag artist Laura Wyatt O’Keeffe and local experts to produce an E. coli promenade performance and audio tour. We also co-curated (with drag queen Shelly Grotto) a pop-up exhibition at the Crab Museum: ECO-DRAG, an exploration of drag as environmental activism.
In 2022 we evaluated Arts Education Exchange‘s organisational practice and supported the development of their creative learning framework. We also worked with them to develop a creative evaluation toolkit.
We interviewed staff, carried out a policy review and ran an evaluation workshop with staff. We also organised scribing workshops led by the artist Una, where young people involved with Arts Education Exchange were introduced to scribing as a powerful tool to tell stories, capture events and express emotions.
In this interactive, creative workshop in summer 2022, participants were prompted to explore our complex and varied relationships to the ocean, its politics and social, political and cultural meanings.
Collaborating with a team from the University of Kent, including Declan Wiffen, we led a ‘cruising nature’ walk and facilitated collage and creative writing responses. Themes included pollution, seaweed and affect, bodies and identity, asylum seeking and activism, (in)visibility.
We have 10+ years experience researching, developing and implementing EDI/DEI policies, as key institutional EDI role holders at the University of Kent and trade unions.
Examples of work in the area include research and policy development in relation to reasonable adjustments for staff, creating inclusive hiring policies, promoting gender equality and an equal pay audit.
Holloway Prison closed in 2016 and we, in collaboration with Dr Carly Guest, have been deeply involved in research and activism calling for a women’s building on the site. A Women’s Building Manifesto offers a vision of a transformative women’s building, bringing to life the ideas and work of women who attend, staff and lead women’s buildings across the UK. It considers the challenges faced by women’s buildings and their transformative effects on the lives of women, communities and society.
A collaborative project with Beauty Out of Ashes and Unit38 architects, this feasibility study lays the groundwork for a new Holloway Women’s Building. Completed in 2024, the study is informed by extensive community engagement, qualitative research with women’s organisations, and creative workshops with women as future visitors to the building.
The aim is to design and financially model a sustainable, independent and trauma-informed home for women’s services in London, as a living legacy of HMP Holloway and the women who were imprisoned there.
This online event in summer 2022 brought together thinkers, writers, cultural producers and activists to explore contemporary and marginalised perspectives on freedom.
We welcomed speakers Farzana Khan, Mia Harris, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, and Lou Macnamara and Kyla Harris. Space was built in for reflection and creative writing responses, creating a nourishing and slow space of connection.
At this collage workshop at the ‘Festival of Ideas’ at the University of Kent in 2022, participants explored how they might represent sound and the sensory in their research through collage.
This training workshop generated productive conversations about methods, positionality and creative research outputs.
HOLLOWAY by Power Play productions is a forum theatre and documentary project. Six women with experience of imprisonment in HMP Holloway returned to the prison and explored their memories, critiques of the prison system and the structural factors that shaped their journeys to prison.
The evaluation – a collaboration with Dr Carly Guest – draws on project documents, pre-production questionnaires, interviews with participants and Power Play, and the film rushes. Evaluation criteria were co-designed with Power Play and the women participating in the project.
We co-created a booklet with the women participating in the project, using art created in reflective, post-filming workshops and words and images from the film rushes.