Beyond The Dark Clouds Podcast Proper Sport

CHARLES FOWLER chairs the Human Values Foundation, which uses positive values to promote young people’s social and emotional development, helps run the UK Values Alliance and is project partner of the Collaborating Centre for Values-based Practice for Health and Social Care at Oxford University. He is a delegate at Values20, the G20 engagement group, and Global Coordinator of World Values Day.

Professor Jackie Dunne, Vice- Chancellor of Birmingham Newman University, shares her leadership journey in Higher Education, offers advice and guidance to aspiring leaders as well as discussing how creating a sense of ‘community’ is essential for student development and learning. She also shares her thoughts on the mission and values at Birmingham Newman University along with some insights that resonate with her linked to Saint John Henry Newman. For Jackie, the ‘soul’ of a university can be seen in and through its students. In other words, students are the measure for who we are and how our values plays out at university. Students are our hope!

Professor Damien Page, Deputy Vice Chancellor at Buckinghamshire New University, talks about what gives him ‘hope’ in the current HE climate whilst also sharing advice and guidance for our current student body on what he feels are important points to keep in mind for a positive future. Being a ‘disrupter’, asking questions as well as being critical of ideas and concepts is something that Damien mentions as being key to becoming employable in today’s job market. He also gives advice to the sector about the need to ‘listen’ to our young people more as they are already innovators in their own right.

Christine Allen, Director of CAFOD, (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development), shares her own leadership journey as well as what gives her hope in the world and in what she is leading as part of CAFOD’s global mission. She also explains CAFOD’s role in raising awareness at events such as COP28 (which took place in Dubai this year) as well as sharing some examples of how her team have made a difference to people's lives in poverty stricken areas around the world. Faith in action is what this podcast is all about.

Tom Riordan CBE – leader of Leeds City Council – discusses the importance of the faith communities in Leeds and their contribution to the city during Covid lockdown in particular. He also discusses his own journey to senior executive positions at the Council and offers guidance and support to students as post-graduation. He also shares his ‘hope’ for education more generally in Leeds.

Sir John Battle shares his theological perspectives on hope and asks whether it matters whether we are rich or poor in the face of some of the most challenging moral problems of our time. Sir John also argues that people of faith should continuously ask questions about how their faith translates into action. He argues for what Jean Guillett (advisor to Pope Paul VI) called a ‘approfundimento continuo’ (i.e. deeping) of our perspectives so that we can continuously engage again and again with truth in every age. He also applies this concept to the role and mission of the Catholic University so that it remains relevant and close to its primary mission in each generation.