A place of community during Lockdown!
The last few months have been difficult times for many people worldwide as many people have had their normal lives changed due to the worldwide response to the Covid -19 pandemic. For many of us it has meant that we have had to isolate or be unable to socialize or meet up with others like we usually would.
For us at Fresh Light, this has meant we have had to be responsive in the way we meet and maintain community and relationship. Since the start of Lockdown, we have had a variety of different online events to bring people together mainly using the Zoom platform, trying to find new ways to meetup and connect.
Throughout the last few months we have had regular events throughout the week; Tuesday Lunch Club, Holiday Club, Online Variety Quiz, Online Games Evening, Friday Night Social and our Saturday Live event - 2 Meters Away.
Although meeting online is never quite the same as meeting physically in person, it has been a real lifeline of normality for many of us. Adapting the way we socialize and maintain community has been important for many of us. Providing a space has also had it's advantages, meaning that location has not been a barrier in our meeting. This has allowed people who would not usually be able to come along to our events in London or Bristol to engage with a number of our events.
The heartbeat of who we are and what we do is embodied in our team of hosts, who have put in so much more to make the online events work. A huge thanks to all of the hosts who have made the last couple of months meaningful for many of us.
It has been great to hear encouraging stories of how people have appreciated the online community socials. We have received comments from many of you saying the online events have been a "lifeline" or "not sure how I would have coped" without the authentic community which has been embodied through Fresh Light.
As we are starting to exit lockdown, we are reviewing how we operate. We now starting to operate some socially distanced physical events, whilst cutting back on some of our online events.
We will continue some online events, but just not operating them as frequently as we have been.
Some of you more recently have asked for ways to help contribute to what we are doing here at Fresh Light and so we have now added an opportunity to donate to what we are doing and help us grow, putting on more events to build authentic community!
Your donations are appreciated as the more people who get involved, the more our cost have started to increase. We aim to ensure our events are accessible, so many will remain free, but for those who want to give, we want to give you the opportunity to support us.
If you do not feel you are able to support us financially, we just appreciate you attending our events, but would love it if you could share what we do with others you feel would be encouraged by what we are building.
Look forward to seeing you at one of our events soon.
