Breaking Open Closed Hearts
Events, theatre, art, and stories from those shaping a more compassionate world
LIVE EVENT: The Forgiveness Café
Inspired by the hugely successful ‘Death Cafés’, this event is designed to explore forgiveness and the choice not to forgive in the workplace, within a creative, participatory, and inclusive environment. Led by professional facilitators, the event offers a communal, discussion-based space where participants can draw on lived experience and engage in in-depth, meaningful dialogue.
The event will be facilitated by Sandra Barefoot (Executive Director, The Forgiveness Project), with Lis Cashin (Consultant and Global Speaker), Siobhan Jackson (Team Leader, Nelson Trust) and Dr Owen Abbott (Lecturer in Social Science, Cardiff University). This Forgiveness Café is one of a range of events marking the national Festival of Social Science, an annual celebration of research and knowledge held by academic institutions across the United Kingdom.
This gathering is open to anyone over the age of 18 (with limited capacity) and offers a space to reflect on how we respond to conflict and hurt in our lives, both in the working world, where professional pressures and personal relationships often blur, and in our private lives.
Date: Wednesday, 22nd October 2025
Time: 1.30pm - 3.30pm BST
Location: Wyndham Street Centre, 3-5 Wyndham Street, Cardiff, CF11 6DQ, UK
Tickets: Free
Find out more and register via the button below.
EXHIBITION: In Process - A life, a film, a book, an exhibition
Artist, author and speaker Angela Findlay is hosting an exhibition of her work at The Vaults, Stroud, United Kingdom, on Sunday the 19th of October and by appointment on other dates throughout this month. On show is a carefully curated selection of work which, she writes, has been “heaved… out of a time of dark chaos” from which “it grew its own wings”.
Speaking on the artistic process, Angela also writes, “Creative expression becomes a form of resilience, opposition, even survival. It can be a small act of regaining control in an otherwise uncontrollable situation; a conduit for grief, an out-breath for trauma, a balm for moral wounds.”
Location: The Vaults, Lower Cemetery Road, 114 Bisley Road, Stroud, GL5 1HG, UK
Opening Times: Sunday 19th October from 11am-5pm, or otherwise by appointment at other times throughout October.
Click the button below to read Angela’s blog.
HUFFPOST ESSAY: My Mom Tortured Me — And Made My Brothers Her Enforcers. Years Later, I Finally Discovered Why.
“Forgiveness didn’t come easily. But it came because I stopped waiting for her to change. I did the changing” writes storyteller Gayle Kirschenbaum in her personal entry for the Huffpost. Here, she recalls intimate details about her difficult childhood and tumultuous relationship with her mother, from which arose a courageous journey towards one of love and acceptance.
Since then, Gayle has won awards for her filmmaking, including one for LOOK AT US NOW, MOTHER! which follows her and her mother’s path towards forgiveness.
You can read the article by clicking on the button below.
LECTURE: Forgiveness in an Age of Outrage
On Sunday 5th October, our Founder Marina Cantacuzino delivered the Ben Jupp Memorial Lecture for Amnesty International at Ely Cathedral. She chose as her subject: ‘Forgiveness in an Age of Outrage‘ after witnessing how hate can be as powerful a unifying force as forgiveness.
She told the audience that The Forgiveness Project was born at a time of global conflict and growing polarisation, noting that “today it feels like everything has got so much worse. So we are always asking ourselves where does forgiveness fit into today’s fixation with binary narratives, inflexible opinion, and toxic othering?”
Perhaps the answer is that forgiveness isn’t only the way we manage pain but also the way we manage what we hate. And so in a world full of hate it seems it’s a quality that we need today perhaps more than ever.
THEATRE: Punch on London’s West End
“Creative expression thrives when things fall apart... and when you don’t have trust of the media and politicians, the arts can fill the space. Theatre above all somehow seems to reach the parts that nothing else can; it can become a place of resistance, resilience and hope.” - Marina Cantacuzino
From Olivier Award-winning writer James Graham (Dear England, This House, BBC’s Sherwood), Punch brings Jacob Dunne’s extraordinary true story to the stage in a gripping, high-energy and deeply moving production directed by Adam Penford.
Last week saw the first in our series of nine post-show conversations following performances of Punch at the Apollo Theatre on London’s West End.
Titled Stepping Into the Shoes of Another, the panel saw Marina Cantacuzino, Founder of The Forgiveness Project and Sandra Barefoot, Executive Director of The Forgiveness Project, joined by long-time storyteller and Founder of Building Bridges for Peace, Jo Berry, and Julie Hesmondhalgh, who plays Joan Scourfield.
You can listen to the full post-show discussion below.
The Nottingham Playhouse production of Punch is produced in the West End by KPPL Productions, Mark Gordon Pictures, Eilene Davidson Productions in association with the Young Vic and Nica Burns.
The first After the Punch post-show event followed a fantastic reception of Punch’s debut on Shaftesbury Avenue; writing for The Stage, Lyn Gardner says the following:
“This is a play that, in the very act of being performed, builds a web of connections across the footlights that then filter out beyond the theatre walls. Punch entertains, but it does more. Like Joan herself, it strives to present a world where, despite all the hurt and loss and bitterness, people can decide to be the best version of themselves they can be. Not the worst.
So, perhaps its no surprise quite that a significant proportion of the audience stayed behind for post-show discussion facilitated by The Forgiveness Project. In the West End, audiences generally just melt into the night. Here, we get to decompress and continue the conversation that the play has began around shame, masculinity, justice and the importance of stories, which Marina Cantacuzino, founder of The Forgiveness Project, described as being a vehicle for ‘breaking open closed hearts and prising open narrow minds’.”
You can read the full review via the button below.
Quote of the week
“About a year before the execution I found it in my heart to forgive Tim McVeigh. It was a release for me rather than for him.” - Bud Welch