Taking Friday Brain Building Club into the Community: Brimscombe Mill Kids Book Festival
One of the things I knew when I launched Friday Brain Building Club was that I didn't want FBBC to exist only in the inboxes of families who subscribe.
Of course, our subscribers are at the heart of the business. Every Friday, a new activity sheet arrives for children to puzzle over, learn from and hopefully genuinely enjoy. But from the beginning, I've also wanted to find ways to get those same opportunities into the hands of children beyond our subscriber community.
That's why I'm so excited that Friday Brain Building Club will be joining the Brimscombe Mill Kids Book Festival, near Stroud in Gloucestershire, this October.
A celebration of books, curiosity and learning
The first Brimscombe Mill Kids Book Festival takes place on Friday 9 and Saturday 10 October 2026, bringing together local and national children's authors alongside storytelling, drawing, creative workshops, book swaps and family activities.
The festival is also part of the National Year of Reading 2026, a campaign led by the National Literacy Trust to encourage more people to rediscover the joy of reading. Importantly, Brimscombe Mill has designed the festival to be accessible, with both paid and free ticket options available to families.
That ethos feels incredibly closely aligned with what we're trying to build at FBBC.
We'll be there with our own dedicated space and plenty of complimentary brain-building activities for children to get stuck into.
Although reading and vocabulary are an important part of what we do, FBBC is really about curiosity in its broadest sense: encouraging children to ask questions, make connections, solve problems, discover new words and experience the satisfaction of working something out for themselves.
And the more children we can encourage to do that, the better.
Why reaching beyond our subscribers matters
I spent more than 15 years working in education before launching FBBC, and educational inequality is something I care deeply about.
The disruption caused by the pandemic brought that inequality into particularly sharp focus. But several years later, the gap hasn't simply disappeared.
The Education Policy Institute's 2026 Annual Report found that disadvantaged children in England were around 10 months behind their peers by the end of primary school in 2025. By the end of secondary school, that gap had grown to 19 months — a full month wider than it was before the pandemic.
Here in the South West, the picture is particularly concerning. At the end of primary school, the disadvantage gap was 12.5 months in 2025, the widest of any English region. By the end of secondary school, it stood at 21.3 months, second only to the South East.
There are, of course, no simple solutions to a problem of that scale, and I would never suggest that an activity sheet can solve educational inequality. But I do believe small businesses can decide what they want to contribute.
For FBBC, that means trying to make high-quality learning activities affordable for the families who subscribe, while also finding ways to put them into children's hands for free.
Taking FBBC out into the community
That's why this community side of Friday Brain Building Club matters so much to me.
We've already been able to give away activity sheets through independent bookshops, work with the Bath Children's Literature Festival and support the National Literacy Trust. We're also actively looking for opportunities to work with schools, community organisations and other places where our sheets can reach children who might enjoy them.
Brimscombe Mill is another step in that journey.
These collaborations aren't about taking a pile of flyers to an event. I want children to actually do something.
Pick up a pencil. Have a go at a Number Tower. Discover an interesting word. Puzzle over a piece of verbal reasoning. Get something wrong, try again and eventually experience that lovely moment when the answer clicks.
And, importantly, take a sheet home whether or not their family ever becomes a subscriber.
Growing a business with purpose
Friday Brain Building Club is still a very young business, and I'm learning all the time.
But one thing I feel increasingly certain about is that I want the commercial and community sides of FBBC to grow together.
Our subscribers make the business sustainable. As that community grows, it gives us greater capacity to reach children outside it too — through free sheets, events, partnerships and other community projects. Seeing a child at an event pick up a pencil and become completely absorbed in one of our puzzles is pretty special too.
Because ultimately, FBBC was created to get more children thinking.
And sometimes the best way to do that is simply to put an interesting challenge in front of them and say: Have a go.
Come and see us at Brimscombe Mill
Friday Brain Building Club will be at the Brimscombe Mill Kids Book Festival on Friday 9 and Saturday 10 October 2026, alongside a fantastic programme of children's authors, storytelling, drawing, workshops and family activities.
Come and say hello, try one of our brain-building challenges and pick up a complimentary FBBC activity sheet to take home.
And if you can't make it to Brimscombe, you can still join us every Friday.
Try Friday Brain Building Club free for 30 days, then £4.99 per month. Cancel anytime.