Who we are
Hello, I’m Kirstie Henderson,
Founder & Creative Director of Brave Day.
I’m a filmmaker, strategic storyteller and creative consultant with more than 20 years’ experience across creative production, communications and community-centred storytelling.
Making sense of complexity through storytelling
Over the past decade, my practice has increasingly focused on health, education, public services, culture and community programmes, particularly work involving lived experience, learning, participation and change.
I’m often drawn to questions such as:
What are we actually trying to understand?
Whose experiences matter?
What is changing?
How can storytelling help us make sense of it?
I’m interested in the stories that emerge through conversations, contradictions, experiences and insights that don’t always fit neatly into a communications brief.
But I’m equally interested in the bigger picture: how those individual stories connect with research, data, programme learning and wider systems change.
For me, the most useful storytelling often happens when we can move between the personal and the structural, weaving lived experience together with evidence and insight to create a fuller understanding of what is happening, why it matters and what might need to happen next.
Making sense of change as it unfolds
This is the kind of storytelling challenge I’m naturally drawn to: projects with lots of moving parts, multiple perspectives and a bigger story of change underneath them. Through work with GMCA, NHS Greater Manchester, the University of Manchester, South Asian Women in Higher Education, and Salford’s centenary programme, I’ve explored how individual experiences can sit alongside research, learning and wider organisational or social change, without losing the human voices at the centre.
Where next?
If you’d like to see how this thinking translates into practice, explore the different ways to work with Brave Day.
Research & Impact Storytelling →
For programmes, research and organisations wanting to capture learning, lived experience and change.
Strategic Storytelling & Training →
For teams wanting to plan, commission or create storytelling more thoughtfully.
Film, Photography & Audio →
For organisations looking for thoughtful creative production.
Brave Day Stories →
Reflections from the field on storytelling, research, learning and impact.