Love Sheffield Newsletter

Uniting Hearts, Igniting Change.

Overcoming the Facebook filters

So you’re a member of Love Sheffield, but find that you’re missing all kinds of useful and interesting posts, or you’ve been locked out of Facebook for calling someone a potato? Worry no more! We will keep you in the loop on all the best stuff here with our Love Sheffield Newsletter.

I’m Brian Mosley, the founder / host of Love Sheffield - our strong social network for the whole of Sheffield, built on kindness, compassion and creativity we’re making it easier for all of our friends to become more connected.

I’m just a Sheffielder - I used to be fat, stressed out, working away from home all week as a freelance engineer… now I’m a happy and healthy wellness coach, working from home with my wife Karen in Wadsley. We have three kids all now young adults living in Sheffield, we love to walk with our Rhodesian Ridgeback Toby in and around Sheffield.

Toby last weekend at his ‘country retreat’ while we were away in Birmingham.

We also love to do our local Parkrun every Saturday at Hillsborough Park.

Doing the last Sheffield Half Marathon with my daughter Amber, 13 weeks pregnant with our second grandchild!

1. It’s all about Connection

It’s so easy in today’s world to feel disconnected, isolated and lonely - back in February 2018 I had a chance to reflect on how we managed to stop Sheffield City Council destroying our healthy street trees… I’d seen how Facebook could be used to bring people together in the virtual world for a good old moan and to facilitate protest, and I saw how that could turn into a toxic nightmare of negativity, frustration and dis-empowerment! I also saw how it could be used to gather a focus group of ordinary citizens who could create impactful public information, and get that out to citizens on a £0 budget… the only difference being vision and leadership.

Karen with Toby on one of our walks, Morehall Reservoir.

I firmly believe that the vast majority of Sheffielders are good people doing their best in difficult circumstances, just focused on living a happy and productive life. It’s easy to become frustrated that ‘those in power’ are ruining our lives - but by connecting with people around shared values and a common purpose, we can create an amazing difference together!

2. Energy flows where focus goes

So I realised that most of our problems in society are caused or made worse by disconnection on all levels, and I asked myself, “what can I do about it?”. That’s where my idea for Love Sheffield began - a creative expression of helping people to become more connected. I started with a private facebook group where I could host a peaceful, personal space focused on what we want to see in Sheffield.

Our beautiful city at sunrise from Walkley.

I’m a big believer in focusing my attention on what I want, rather than what I don’t want in life… so I just invited all of my friends to join the group, agreed on some very simple ground rules to make it easy for everyone to get along online, and started inviting more friends to join us.

Our aim is to help everyone become more connected around our shared values of kindness, compassion, inclusiveness and creating a positive difference through our communities.

From our central members group, we move to our Love Sheffield Satellite Groups, where we can connect with like minded friends to create a positive difference together.

3. We’re just getting started

I’m so excited that you’re here to read this very first Love Sheffield Newsletter! We will be using this channel to scale up our vision.

We will find and explore new and creative ways to become more connected, with our city and surrounding areas that we love, with our personal sense of agency (power to create a positive difference in the world), with our local communities, with our city wide communities and with our civic opportunities.

This Love Sheffield newsletter will be free for everyone, forever thanks to my Patreon supporters - supporting me in this creative expression - to help Sheffield become the most vibrant and connected community of communities on the planet.

4. Please reach out

More heads are always better than one! Our questions for Love Sheffield are so important to share our perspectives in a safe space, where we won’t be jumped on by strangers for having a heartfelt opinion - I’ll be reaching out as much as I can, but please contact me and let’s have a conversation! We all need each other, to succeed.

5. We will keep connecting

I hope we will be able to evolve this newsletter to give you a fantastic sense of connection with our many thousands of friends across Sheffield. Who knows what we can achieve together.