Our first meetup a success!

What a great experience.

Yesterday we had our first Newsletter walk, cuppa and chat with friends in Love Sheffield at the 1554 Cafe in the Cathedral - here are a few pics and thoughts from the day…

Vivien Willatt

Thank you, Brian Mosley, for organising today's café meet up.... a few snaps I took on my walk there.

Inspirational street sign

view across Peace Gardens

a cheerful sweatshirt in a charity shop

and one of the waterfalls... a good afternoon.

Sue Williams

The newsletter is great! Thanks to all who are contributing and especially for the photos. It was a joy and a privilege to meet up with others from Love Sheffield and put names and faces together. The venue couldn't have been better, as it is a safe and friendly place to be in the busyness of the city centre. Heartfelt thanks to Karen for being such a good listener and put me at my ease in no time. The idea of having localised meetings in city-wide venues is so good and I just hope I can get to Dukes in the Park, which is on my doorstep. Well done Brian - it was a huge success

Sorry, forgot to add that the gathering made folk feel accepted and valued, which is so important if you're feeling alone or vulnerable in any way.

Gill Wier

I work just round the corner from the cathedral so thought I would take the opportunity to meet Brian and others from the Love Sheffield group so that I could put a few faces to names. I had some interesting conversations and enjoyed the coffee and friendly atmosphere. Thanks for organising this, I look forward to seeing how Love Sheffield develops.

Anne Edwards

I would recommend meeting as we did today to anyone, a group of very different people all with a similar interest in Sheffield. So difficult these days to meet and talk as everyone messages or puts things on Facebook, which is great but not as good as face to face. I also noticed that it was quite a wide age group.

Keith Naylor

It was good to meet others in the Love Sheffield Group this afternoon in the Cathedral. I am sure more meeting will follow as people gain confidence within the group.

I wish to say that every time I have visited the cathedral the people are just so friendly, helpful, welcoming and just so nice. They give a real sense of community to all.

By chance there was a quartet rehearsing for a concert tonight Candlelight Fever Tribute to Coldplay. So, a little photo opportunity and to advise sounds great.

I also need the recipe for the sticky fruit cake I had in the 1554 coffee shop that was reyt nice.

Park Hill flowers

Ian Wilshaw

It always takes a bit of courage to meet complete strangers for the first time and to attend a brand-new event, but there's also a degree of anticipated excitement borne from not knowing who would be there or what the format would be. So it was with these mixed emotions that I attended the first Love Sheffield get together held at Sheffield Cathedral Cafe and hosted by Brian Mosley. Brian was a comforting, familiar face to me, as we have met on a number of occasions, amongst a sea of strangers.

I struck up an initial conversation with a lady and having ordered a coffee, sat with her. We chatted away for a good hour and had a number of common interests, the time flew by. I thought that we, the whole group, might have gone off to take some city centre photos, but was advised that pictures should have been taken en-route to the meeting. So unfortunately I didn’t take any, nor did I get chance to talk to anyone else, thanks to the interesting oratory skills of my companion. I look forward to the next event, to taking some photos and to talking to a mix of strangers and familiar faces, it will take a little less courage to do so.

Rebecca Sherwin

Some pics from our walk to this afternoon’s meet up. (Emilia’s dad will kill me for the Bramall Lane one!)

Brian Mosley

What an exciting day! Karen joined me for a walk from our home in Wadsley to the Cathedral for this first of many meet ups… we were just hoping that a good number of friends from Love Sheffield would answer our invitation and turn out for a cuppa and a chat with some new friends in person.

We were so happy and surprised to see a great turnout, and had a number of really nice connections, getting to know people and enjoying the art of conversation for a change!

Here are some pictures I took along the way…

Butchers shop in Hillsborough

Cathedral windows bathed in sunlight

West Bar on the way home

Despite feeling a little nervous on the way, that it would work, we left feeling inspired, energised and looking forward to repeating this in many more locations across Sheffield. I hope you will join us - I’ll look at planning an event for next week, and we will gradually build these up. I think we have the beginning of something very special here.