About Us

We believe that playing nice and working together gets us much closer to where we want to be and would love for you to add your own kind of brilliant to our team.

Anji Marples

The idea for Forging Futures was born out of a combination of numerous experiences, frustrations, reflections and some very steep learning curves. Growing up with a vicious self-critical voice which plagued me throughout my life, my learning and my career, I ultimately realised that I needed to dedicate many hours to learning to understand the brain, in order to start addressing the effects that my thinking was having on my life. I'm still working on that, but along the way, I started to realise that many of these problems are magnified for young people living in today's digital age and that the job that I was doing, did not actually help young people in the meaningful and lasting way that they clearly need to be helped.

In terms of qualifications, training and experience, I have a degree in psychology, several years working with young people and families and 10 years experience of being a secondary English teacher. I am a trained Mindfulness in Schools practitioner ('dot.be', mindfulnessinschools.org) and am currently working towards qualifying as a personal coach with a view to integrating this into the work that I currently do with young people and their families.

I have recently become a mother for the first time and I love it! I enjoy learning so much about myself and challenging some of my own beliefs and barriers as we grow and make mistakes together.

I currently tutor locally, deliver ‘dot.be’ to ‘looked-after' young people, coach a number of adults to reach their goals and am working on developing a number of courses for young people in the community.

I aim to use compassionate teaching and 21st Century tools to bring curiosity, individual passion and community into personalised learning for young people to help them to be their ‘Own kind of brilliant’ and am constantly developing new courses which meet community needs.

I am passionate about combining teaching expertise, mindfulness, coaching and the wealth of free technology out there, to help young people to create positive digital footprints, enhance their communication skills and to develop confidence and control in their own learning.

I strongly believe in working with others and sharing our combined skills, and am currently involved with various community projects including Transition Belper, Blue Box Belper (as a committee member and fierce advocate), Belper Freedom Feed’Em and Boom parent’s magazine.

I also have strong interest in the fantastic work being done by the Compassionate Mind Foundation (www.compassionatemind.co.uk) and aim to integrate some of their extensive research into what Forging Futures delivers.

I have a background of multi-agency working, have previously worked for organisations such as Sure Start and Connexions and am currently working with Cambian and the ‘Mindfulness in Schools Project’ to bring mindfulness to more looked-after young people. I maintain a strong belief in the ethos of clear communication between agencies and the importance of putting the whole child at the centre of what we do.

I am also just developing my BSL skills, and those of my little man, and so have an interest in collaborating with the deaf community to develop my signing and hopefully, as things develop, the interest and skills of local young people.

If there is anything further you want to know about me and the work we do, then please get in touch using the website or Linked In. I’d love to hear from you!

As well as Anji, our main mind-meld includes a number of other fantastic folk who work full-time in other roles but are also passionate about about helping young people. They include:

Matt Peacock

Our technical hero and the person we ask if we want to know how to implement our ideas in the most practical and current way. With over 20 years experience in educational IT, Matt is currently network manager at Derby College and co-founder of ‘Take IT Further’.

Karen Christie

Karen has a wealth of experience in teaching and learning in a number of roles but currently specialises in working with young people from extremely challenging circumstances . She is currently developing a personalised course to deliver to a core group of young people.

Stephanie Charlesworth

Reformed secondary teacher, and current Project Manager for an ethical hacking company. Having moved to a new industry to face fresh challenges , she likes to encourage others to push themselves just beyond their comfort zone to see what alternatives might exist for them.

We are also collaborating with a number of other teachers, tutors, SEN specialists, community-minded folk, thespians and small business owners in a number of different ways. If you have been working with us and would like to share your details here, just let us know.