A place at the table: how Bristol’s Welcoming Spaces are building community

Born out of the cost-of-living crisis, Bristol’s Welcoming Spaces have grown from warm refuges into vibrant hubs of community and connection. Now, through shared meals and collective action, they’re proving that the simplest acts – warmth, food, and welcome – can transform lives. Hear more from Good Faith Partnership’s Alisha Palmer.

Back in the winter of 2022-23, during the height of the cost-of-living crisis, we began to see a revolution. Warm Spaces started popping up everywhere: simple, heated places for people who couldn’t afford to heat their own home. Bristol really bought into this idea, and these spaces were transformative. They quickly became known as Welcoming Spaces – people came for the warmth, but stayed for the welcome!

Since then, Bristol has become a key part of the national Warm Welcome story. Across the UK, there are now more than 5,300 registered spaces, including community centres, libraries, places of faith, and leisure centres. Type in your postcode and see which ones are near you! The impact is huge: tackling isolation, loneliness, and poor mental health in ways that formal services can struggle to do.

Bristol Warm Welcome Network

Originally, Good Faith Partnership specifically supported Bristol churches hosting Welcoming Spaces, helping them attract new guests and build relationships with others doing the same across the city. Things have now grown beyond that to form the Bristol Warm Welcome Network – an offer to all Welcoming Spaces and community cafés, regardless of setting.

Roughly every two months, volunteers and leaders come together (sometimes online, sometimes in person) to meet other people in the sector, share stories about their individual spaces, receive relevant, in-depth learning that will help improve their offers, and hear about funding opportunities.

Our next event is an in-person bumper health day for warm space leaders and volunteers. Taking place on Monday 20 October, 10am-2pm at The Foundation event space at Triodos Bank, it’ll have expert workshops showing spaces how they can support the physical and mental health of local residents. Sign up here! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter for the formal sign-up, and to stay up to date with other Bristol Warm Welcome Network events. Click here to subscribe.

The Power of Community Meals

At our very first Bristol Warm Welcome Network meeting, we explored the power of sharing a meal together. Maria Perrett from Lockleaze Neighbourhood Trust shared how their community feasts bring together people of all ages and backgrounds. Sharing a meal helps people connect with one another, and tackles food poverty and food waste as well. They’re also a brilliant centrepoint to bring in other wraparound support. You might come for a meal, but then stay to see the district nurse, get some debt advice, or do a class.

There are more than 110 regular community meals in Bristol. The work of organisations like Feeding Bristol and FareShare South West play a huge role in enabling the scale and diversity of that provision. B&A is a church on Gloucester Rd that employs a chef and driver, and cook more than 700 meals a week for over 200 community spaces. B&A meals also provides professionally made hot food to churches across the city so they can offer community meals regardless of their own cooking facilities and capacity. For example, Christ Church Hanham tackles the profound loneliness in their area through a community lunch, despite not even having a kitchen!

Getting involved

Here’s our question: what if there was a community meal every week, in every part of Bristol? What if you could walk 15 minutes and find a table where you’d be welcomed, fed, and included? Imagine the difference if every Bristolian saw themselves as part of this vision.

Maybe you:

● Have surplus food you could donate?

● Could open up a space for a meal?

● Love cooking and want to share that gift?

● Have a neighbour who’d like someone to go with them to a meal?

At its heart, this isn’t just about filling plates – it’s about filling lives with meaning, belonging, and hope. If this sparks something in you, we’d love to hear from you! Get in touch with alisha.palmer@goodfaith.org.uk.

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