On completing school in 1905, Arnold went on to study at St John's College, Oxford where, being a committed Socialist, he joined the Fabian Society.
He was a vegetarian and engaged in social work from an early age, having been a member of the Highbury Quadrant Congregationalist church.
He and his sister Daisy spent a year at the Quaker Settlement in Woodbrooke, Birmingham and thereafter he began to do extramural work in tutorial classes for the Universities of Sheffield, London and Oxford.
It was part of the university Settlement movement, which "sought to bring education, improvement and hope to the lives of the poor and socially disadvantaged in the decades before the development of the Welfare State following the Second World War.
The early decades of the Sheffield Settlement coincided with the serious hardship of the post-First World War era, typified by the Depression and mass unemployment.
In 1921, however, he describes a second encounter: In 1922 he was co-organiser together with Professor Millicent Mackenzie of the large public conference "Spiritual Values in Education and in Social Life", run predominantly at Manchester College whose principal, Dr L.P. Jacks was another sympathiser and where Rudolf Steiner was able to put forward his ideas to a group of British educators.
[2][3] These convictions caused some conflict amongst some members of the Settlement's Council but it was Freeman's main aim to achieve spiritual values through education.
There were a lot of activities besides: courses of handicrafts, rambles, camping expeditions and involving the membership in the performance of plays.
In its place Christopher Boulton founded a Rudolf Steiner Settlement where the Merlin Theatre and the Arnold Freeman Hall still flourish.