In this episode James is joined by Debbie Tibbey. Debbie was born into a Christian family in the North East of England in the 1960s. At the age of 18, she found out about the Bahá’i Faith and after investigating the religion for a year or so, she declared her faith in Bahá’u’lláh and became a Bahá’i. After studying Drama and Art to degree level in Liverpool she trained as a primary school teacher, a career which spanned almost 30 years, and included teaching posts in various parts of UK and in Eswatini (still Swaziland in the 1990s) where she helped to establish a Bahá’i-run primary school open to children of all ethnicities, faiths and backgrounds. She has served on NASACRE, the REC and the Expert Advisory Group for RE as well as on Dorset SACRE as the Bahá’i representative.

She now teaches and mentors teenagers with additional needs at an independent specialist school which holds great importance on mental wellbeing, creativity and the importance of animals and the outdoors.

She married to artist and sculptor Charles Tibbey and they have two grown sons and a very elderly cat.