Learnings of the Bristol Warm Welcome Network: Community Meals

At the very first Bristol Warm Welcome Network meeting, we explored the powerful impact of sharing a meal together.

Maria from Lockleaze Neighbourhood Trust (https://www.lockleazent.co.uk) shared how their community feasts bring together people of all ages and backgrounds. Sharing a meal can tackle loneliness and isolation, as well as food poverty and food waste. It’s also really fun! And a great way to learn about different cultures, too.

Around 40 Welcoming Spaces in Bristol regularly offer community meals alongside many others, from neighbourhood lunches to Peace Feasts for the refugee and asylum seeker communities hosted by Bridges for Communities (https://www.bridgesforcommunities.com) . Here are some of them dotted around the city!

The work of organisations like Feeding Bristol and FareShare South West play a huge role in enabling the scale and diversity of existing provision.

B&A Meals also provides cooked food to churches across the city, so they can offer hot meals regardless of their own cooking facilities. For example, Christ Church Hanham make a difference in their area through a community lunch, despite not having a kitchen!

We can already see across Bristol that community meals are powerful.

And here’s the exciting bit: what if there was a weekly community meal in every ward in Bristol?

What if everyone in the city could walk 15 minutes and find a table where they’d be welcomed, fed, and included? We know from the data there are some areas in the city where community meals should be prioritised. This is bigger than food. It’s about creating places where people feel they belong.

To explore anything in this blog post further please do not hesitate to reach out to alisha.palmer@goodfaith.org.uk