A positive partnership with BIMM University

Mark Lewis is the Head of Student Wellbeing at BIMM University, which specialises in teaching within the creative industries to over 9,000 students across nine campuses. His wellbeing team has been working in partnership with trainers from the Trust; it’s a “perfect fit” he says.

Mark met Charlie Waller Trust trainers Julie Castleman and Mark Fudge at an external workshop he attended. “It helped us see that different institutions are dealing with similar challenges,” he says. “We felt that working with the Trust could help us build a framework to work in an effective way.”

Following on from that, Julie ran a session for BIMM’s wellbeing managers with a focus on mental health. “It was a great success,” Mark says, “we all got something out of it.”

Julie has also run sessions on wellbeing strategy and mental health steering groups and will be working with Mark and his team to create a mental health strategy and policies using the Trust’s CREATE University Mental Health Toolkit.

Mark sees the partnership with the Trust as tremendously beneficial. He says: “You’d be a fool if you thought you could do this on your own. We need extra knowledge and resources, and now we’ve got some important new tools in our toolkit. We have to work better, internally and externally, and we need ‘critical friends’ to help us.

“Plus, you realise that you’re not on your own, we’re all pulling together for the common good.”

Mark has seen the pressures on students change over the 25 years that he has worked in student support. “People speak more openly now about their feelings and know they can seek help,” he says. “There’s a high demand for our services. Our students face a lot of challenges, some of them quite complex. The cost of living has had a big impact, along with the impact of social media and lifestyle choices. They’re not always equipped to deal with what life throws at them.

“It’s important that we’re there for them but we also need to be more proactive with early intervention, which is why we’re doing more wellbeing activities and awareness-raising.”

Mark was keen that they should raise money for the Trust, so eight members of staff and seven students took part in the Great Birmingham Run on 4 May. “It was great,” says Mark, “we all participated as one, helping one another while raising awareness of positive wellbeing. I know how great the Trust is and I wore my Charlie Waller Trust T-shirt with pride.”