Heart of Newhaven Community named as our 5,000th Warm Welcome Space!

The Warm Welcome Campaign wants everyone in the UK to find a place of belonging and reconnection at a Warm Welcome Space near their home.

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Around 66% of the population live within a 30-minute walk of a Warm Welcome Space. This is a fantastic achievement, but we want to grow the number of spaces so everyone can experience the joy, positivity, and friendship that Warm Welcome Spaces offer to local communities.

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In October, we set ourselves a big challenge of having 5,000 Warm Welcome Spaces registered by Warm Welcome Week (20–26 January 2025). Since then, the number of spaces joining us has grown by over 25%, and we’ve just hit our 5,000 target. The number is growing every single day. Since the freezing weather kicked in at the start of January, around 150 new Warm Welcome Spaces have joined us. The response of local community spaces has been phenomenal.

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We are thrilled to announce that Heart of Newhaven Community in Edinburgh is our 5,000th Warm Welcome Space! Their community hub is open to everyone; it’s an intergenerational space that wants to bring people together.

Through partnership working and community engagement, Heart of Newhaven Community seeks to reduce isolation, challenge and remove barriers to participation, and create opportunities for people of all ages, from all walks of life and with a variety of interests, to come together. Their intergenerational hub helps people experience, share, and exchange culture and heritage, engage in formal and informal learning, and develop business and enterprise skills in an accessible, welcoming environment that contributes to the positive wellbeing of their community.

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Along with a twice-weekly Warm Welcome Coffee Morning, they offer a huge range of activities and events for the whole community, including gardening, knitting, digital support for getting online, advice sessions, and a weekly free lunch hosted by the Cyrenians.

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David Barclay, Warm Welcome Campaign Director, says:

"Warm Welcome Week is our national campaign to celebrate the outstanding support Warm Welcome Spaces offer, to raise awareness, and to encourage more community spaces to open their doors to local people. We’re humbled by the outpouring of support from local communities and the huge number of spaces registering with us over the last few cold and dark weeks. We are so thrilled to welcome and celebrate Heart of Newhaven Community as the 5,000th community space to join us.

Thanks are due to every single space that has registered with us! In January alone, we’ve seen a huge growth of spaces, from libraries, community centres, cafes, arts centres, and places of faith to sports centres and music venues. Every single space that joins us means we are getting closer and closer to our ambition to achieve a Warm Welcome for All."

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Just before Christmas, Heart of Newhaven Community created an amazing gift for the community. Through the kindness and support of local people, they made an awesome 17-foot 7-in tall, knitted Christmas Tree, all made from the needles of local people. Their wonderful Christmas tree was celebrated by the BBC Breakfast team just before Christmas!

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