at the heart of our work
Collaboration and Community
Our Level Two course explores the concept of community in detail.
This quote from Dewey focuses on what the purpose of community is and what is needed to bring it about. Collaboration is the way in which a community works to bring about its purpose - or common understanding. Without collaboration, a community can break down. Ann Margaret Sharp's description of a Community of Philosophical Enquiry captures this collaborative element:
"A group of [people] who inquire together about common problematic issues in such a way that they build on each other's ideas, offer each other counterexamples, question each other's inferences and encourage each other to come up with alternative views and solutions to the problem at hand and follow the enquiry where it leads." The Other Dimension of Caring Thinking
Our news this month is full of collaborations and community, of colleagues working together, funders supporting and developing our work so it can reach many more beneficiaries, people and schools joining us, and ways that more can be welcomed into our community of practitioners, teachers, educators, and curious enquirers.
As we slowly become Thoughtful, and build our new website, we are updating our usernames on social media. You can find us and our new handles on Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky and on TikTok. X and Facebook still have our old handles.
Let the Wondering Begin
Our Wonder Wander 2025 is today!
Grace and Emma are being joined by some of our trainers and staff, as well as volunteers at a local Scout group and a GP's wellbeing team (!) in different locations across the UK this year. They are all raising money for philosophy sessions with looked-after children through virtual schools. And, at the same time, giving themselves the space to think, ponder, and collaborate through meaningful conversations.
There are 60 questions - donated by you - for them to discuss as they wander over hill, over dale, through the town, and through forests. They will not stop until they have answered all of them, even if the wondering has to continue after the wandering has finished!
If you are in London look out for three of our intrepid thinkers (possibly dressed as Wonder Woman) as they pass from King's Cross to Waterloo, taking in the sights seen by philosophers past and present.
You can follow the conversations and fun on Instagram, and if you laugh or start to think about one of the questions under consideration, please donate to help make this fundraiser event just as successful as last year.
Thoughtful Annual Conference
We are delighted to announce that The Royal Institute of Philosophy (TRIP) and The Analysis Trust have kindly supported our Annual Conference this year. The support from TRIP allows us to freeze ticket prices at the super early bird rate of £70 for all delegates and to expand our bursary offer. The support from the Analysis Trust allows us to offer bursaries specifically to students at University.
If you are a student, or if you face financial barriers that prevent you from joining us, please do not hesitate to apply for a bursary here. Please pass on this information to students as we have 10 student bursaries to offer.
Our 2025 Annual Conference is being held on Saturday, 15th November, at The University of South Wales (USW), Newport campus.
We’re thrilled to welcome two inspiring keynote speakers. Professor Angie Hobbs and Dr Beth Mackintosh both speaking on the theme of Thoughtfulness. They will be joined by a whole host of presenters, workshop leaders and speakers in person and online, giving us a wide range of ideas to inspire and challenge delegates. The full programme will be announced very soon on our site.
This year we are also running a pre-Conference event: a live P4C demonstration and discussion on Friday 14 November 14.00 – 16.30 (the afternoon before the conference). The live demo will feature two SAPERE (Thoughtful) Gold Award Schools, one primary and one secondary.
The first is Ysgol Panteg a Welsh medium primary school in Griffithstown Pontypool. The second is the John Frost School, a comprehensive on the south-western outskirts of Newport. Children and Young People from the schools will demonstrate their philosophical enquiry
skills in enquires around ‘thoughtfulness,’ and the students and teachers will answer questions in a discussion afterwards.
All in-person ticket holders are welcome to attend at no extra charge but must register to attend. Details of the room location will be sent by email.
Whether you're an educator, practitioner, student, or lifelong learner, this conference promises rich discussion, new insights, and plenty of opportunities to connect.
Partnerships
We are thrilled to be taking forward three new partnerships this year and to be collaborating so closely with others in the worldwide P4C community.
We are working with The Philosophy Foundation to bring more philosophy into schools. We are co-delivering sessions for pupils and training for teachers, helping young people learn to think well and develop their oracy skills through philosophy
We are also collaborating with the Association of Philosophy in Schools (Western Australia) in mutual advocacy, professional development, resources and programme exchanges.
Following a stimulating presentation at last year’s conference by Assistant Headteacher Adam Studee, the collaboration with Starlight explores how AI coaching can support facilitators. By capturing session audio, generating transcripts for teacher reflection, and generating private coaching reports, Starlight is designed to enhance professional reflection—helping facilitators recall session flow, identify patterns, and to reflect on how they might adapt their practice in response to evidence. Our trainers will pilot this coaching system in September, both for their own development and in classroom observations, with feedback to follow in the spring.
The aim of these partnerships is to empower teachers and students alike with a passion and a platform to develop their curiosity, to question, think and move towards understanding. Together we will use our shared aspirations and expertise to promote, develop and train teachers and educators, and to bring the best quality experience of philosophical enquiry or P4C to young people in schools.
Pages of my Life: Art, Care and Conversation
Care leavers are over-represented in the prison population; one third of the prison population in Deerbolt Prison, County Durham, are care-experienced.
Being creative has been shown to improve safety and well-being in prisons, help people in prison build relationships with family members (Creativity in a Restricted Regime, National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance), and have a positive impact on rehabilitation and relationships within the criminal justice system.
Following a creative consultation with young men at HMP Deerbolt, Blue Cabin and Nepacs were awarded funding by The National Lottery Community Fund, Reaching Communities Programme, to deliver a three-year project called Creative Aid. Now with funding from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation we are working alongside Blue Cabin to bring philosophical enquiry into this project at Deerbolt.
Our involvement in this project began last term, and now you can join Blue Cabin for a free thought-provoking workshop about art, identity and expression as part of this project.
This interactive session invites you to explore a unique digital exhibition showcasing artwork created by care-experienced young men in Deerbolt Prison, as part of Blue Cabin’s and Nepacs’ Creative Aid project.
It is a free, online event taking place on Wednesday 22 October from 2.30pm-4.30pm.
Together with author and prison educator Andy West, and our co-Director and philosopher Grace Lockrobin, you will explore the philosophical approaches used to engage the young men in conversations about their artwork, delve into the themes emerging from the artwork, and reflect on what it means to create art as a care-experienced person in prison.
Whether you’re interested in art and philosophy, have a stake in care, prisons, or education, or are just curious, everyone is welcome to join this session.
P4C - Building Resilience to Extremism
The Building Resilience to Extremism through Enquiry project has been selected again through a very competitive funding process for the sixth year running by the Mayor’s Shared Endeavour Fund, which supports schools in preventing intolerance, hate and extremism
The BREE project is an oracy initiative, which has been extremely well regarded and praised by the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime over the past 5 years. The project focuses on using Philosophy for Children and Communities to help young people build resilience to extremism.
The project has already got underway, but we have new places available for London schools in November - but time and places are limited.
Please get in touch with Laura, our Project Manager, to find out more if you would like to take advantage of fully funded P4C training that looks specifically at challenging conversations in the primary and secondary classrooms.
Youth Board
We are now in the process of establishing our Youth Board. Comprising of young people aged 14-18 from across our P4C schools many will have been doing philosophy at their school since they joined in Y7, and some will have taken part in our training programme to facilitate philosophical enquiry with younger students or peers.
Our Youth Board will be there to consult and co-create as our main stakeholders. They will be engaged in governance, communications and programme development. They will represent the voice of their peers from across the UK and help the charity make decisions that will best impact on the lives of young people.
If you would like your students to be involved, find out more by clicking the button below.
Fellowship
We are pleased to announce our Fellowship Charter.
Through Fellowship our aim is to identify exceptional philosophical educators and P4C practitioners and to support and connect with those people to enhance their development and for the benefit of our community of practice. We want to showcase best practice and offer Fellows a
platform to share their work with peers and the wider public.
Just as our School Awards celebrate educational institutions that embed P4C, our Fellowship Awards recognise excellence in individuals who embed P4C in their work, whether affiliated with an institution or not.
Apply to be a Fellow today.
Award Schools
We have more schools to welcome to our P4C community: Sedlescombe Primary School and Queen's Inclosure Primary School have both received a Bronze Award during the Summer, and Ann Edwards C of E Primary School has taken their Silver to Gold!
Very many congratulations to all of them - they join over 70 schools that currently hold one of our Awards. The feedback from our assessors is always so impressive for all of the Awards given. As an example, here is what they said about Ann Edwards Gold Award:
“Ann Edwards has invested significant time and energy in establishing P4C as a strong part of the curriculum, and P4C features in the development plan, and curriculum plans. It is strongly linked with the ethos and values of the school and the link governor talked supportively about the way in which the RE provision and P4C align in developing the children as people able to collaborate in school and bring those skills of reasonable and well-reasoned disagreement into family and community life beyond school. Parents were also supportive of P4C for both its curriculum enhancement as well as the skills they see as important for life.”
Autumn Courses
Click below to find out more about all of our courses available this term.
We have a new Bespoke Level One Course for engaging parents and schools in meaningful conversations together, and supporting parental engagement beyond the classroom. We also have our new Academic Trainer Development course running in November under the Level One category.
Take your development further with Lead P4C (online in the Spring) and our Level Two training.
For World Philosophy Day (November 20th), we are running our Experience P4C module from Level One, so you can try before you buy the whole course.
New Trustees
We are very grateful to be joined by new Trustees this Summer.
After sadly saying goodbye to trustees Jeannie Cohen, Paul Jackson and Tim Yorke last term, we welcomed Brian Grady, and now Amanda Burgess and Professor Fiona Macpherson.
Following an early career in fundraising Amanda brings over 20 years of public relations expertise. Amanda is a long-time advocate for philosophy and critical thinking in public life. She holds three degrees in philosophy and helped develop the 4Rs campaign and The Philosophers' Football Match, which proposed adding ‘reasoning’ to the traditional curriculum and raised the profile of philosophy in education.
Fiona is Professor of Philosophy and founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience at the University of Glasgow. She is a leading scholar in the philosophy of mind and perception, with research spanning consciousness, sensory experience, illusion and hallucination, imagination, memory, dreaming, and colour. As President of the British Philosophical Association, she works hard to bring philosophy to life and show it has meaning for everyone. She looks forward to making more connections between Thoughtful and the Academic Philosophy community.
International Winchester Advanced P4C Webinar
Dr Patricia Hannam and Dr Joanna Haynes invite you to their next Advanced P4C webinar on Saturday, October 4th, from 13:00-16:00 UK time, online.
From Desiring to Inquiring. Setting the Stage for Attention through Philosophical Dialogue with Lucy Elvis and Michela Danetti from the University of Galway, Ireland.
The seminar will consist of presentations and co-facilitated activities and discussions, including smaller break-out groups, all held within the spirit of the Community of Enquiry.
There are no charges, but people are asked to commit to attending the whole event.
To reserve your place email Patricia Hannam at thinkingworlds@yahoo.co.uk.
So...where is Thoughtful?
You might have noticed that we aren't doing a big thing...just slowly transitioning. Thoughtfully. We are working on the new website, but for now both sites point to SAPERE's site, and when we switch over the same will be for SAPERE pointing to Thoughtful. Our emails remain the same for now.
New Certificates are being designed and will be sent to all Award Schools when they are ready. Our social feeds are also being slowly updated to represent our new name and look. Those who have attended our new Level Two recently will have seen the branding, along with anyone who attends a new Level One from now on.
The best things come to those who wait...
