The infectious essence of Warm Welcome

We recently held our kick off meeting for our Warm Welcome Champions Programme, bringing together around 25 community spaces from all across the UK to share and learn together in Birmingham Library.

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Over the course of the day we ran a number of different sessions – on communications and sharing our stories, on making our Spaces more inclusive, on plans for Warm Welcome Week in January. In each session our Champion Spaces were buzzing with ideas, from apps used to get press releases to local newspapers to sensory packs offered to young people with special educational needs. It was a richly practical time, with everyone coming away energised by the new things they could implement in their own contexts.

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But there was also something else giving us all a spring in our step as we left the library that day. It was the fact that we had had the opportunity once again to experience the infectious essence of Warm Welcome. Two stories shared by Spaces really stood out for me. One was from the incredible Uplift organisation in Birmingham, where a fairly new guest to the Space suffered the painful loss of her mother. In the depths of her grief she came to Uplift and fell into the arms of Naima the leader. Moved by what they saw and heard, a number of other women decided to create a moment for this grieving daughter by cooking special dishes and surrounding her with love at the following session. The woman’s response was to say: “This is my family – such a lovely family.”

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Another story came from a church near Derby, where the leader had asked guests in the days leading up to this Champions event to share a few words on why they liked coming to the Space. Amongst various phrases about food, laughter and banter was one that cut straight to the heart – ‘we are wanted here’. As a foster carer and someone who has worked over the years with refugees and asylum seekers, I have known many people who have experienced deeply the sense of not being wanted. And I think we all know there are so many who would identify with that in our country right now. So we know what a transformational and precious gift it is to create a space where people experience in a tangible way that they are worthy of care and love, that they are wanted.

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Warm Welcome Spaces are not immune from the mundane practical implications of everyday life – one local leader commented to me recently ‘David, you’ll never believe how much I have to spend on toilet roll!’ But what these stories reveal is that community spaces of all kinds – from faith spaces to libraries to community centres and beyond – are creating moments of pure human encounter which are increasingly rare and precious in a world often driven by the remorseless logic of power and money.

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That essence of care and belonging is utterly infectious. It’s what fuels our Warm Welcome team, who came away from the Champions Day more fired up than ever to do our work of resourcing, connecting and championing local Spaces. We know it also fuels our Champion Space leaders, whose feedback suggested that this event had been not just practically useful but also a deeply encouraging and inspiring experience. And it fuels our partner organisations, with one corporate recently creating an internal pledge to visit every Warm Welcome Space in their region of the country.  

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It's why, three years in to Warm Welcome, our momentum and growth shows no signs of slowing down as we approach 6,000 registered Spaces in every part of the UK. So, if you haven’t yet experienced that infectious essence of Warm Welcome, find your nearest Space on our map and get involved this winter – you won’t regret it.