The Great Get Together 2024
This weekend (21st-23rd June), communities across the country will be celebrating The Great Get Together – an annual celebration of everything that unites us, inspired by Jo Cox’s powerful message that we have more in common that what divides us. This year is particularly poignant, as we celebrate what would have been Jo’s 50th birthday by finding ways to come together in an increasingly polarised world.
The ’more in common’ message resonates so strongly with us at WIN. Interfaith dialogue helps us find points of connection and shared experiences, while also teaching us to celebrate our differences rather than fear them. With hate and division on the rise, community, friendship and solidarity are more important than ever.
The Great Get Together website has a map of events taking place around the country, as well as a toolkit to help you to throw your own ‘get together’, so there are lots of ways to get involved. We hope that this campaign encourages you to find new ways to reach out to your community, not just this weekend, but all year round.
Great Get Together ‘WINspirations’
If you’re still thinking of event ideas for this weekend or ways to take the ‘great get together’ forward into the rest of the year, we hope these examples of our own WIN groups working to bring people together will inspire and encourage you.
Barnet WIN’s Book Club
The Jo Cox Foundation are encouraging communities to organise a ‘Read Together’ as part of the Great Get Together campaign, as ‘nothing helps you to walk in another’s shoes like reading’. Barnet WIN launched their own book club in November 2020 to combat the isolation of lockdown, and found that – in the words of Barnet Co-Chair Suchita – reading together opened up rich conversations around members own ‘experience and memories of our upbringing, culture and tradition, the pain of leaving our countries and much more’.
Food and Friendship
Have you noticed how sharing food always helps break down barriers, bring people together and kickstart conversations? Our Food and Friendship project uses interfaith shared meals to bring together WIN’s members of all faiths and none with people seeking asylum or from refugee and migrant backgrounds. The meals represent a safe space, where attendees can make new connections and learn about different cultures or celebrate their own heritage through food. We launched this project in Westminster in July 2023 and are now collaborating with our members on bringing the shared meals to a new borough. Watch this space for updates!
Street Café
With loneliness on the rise and so many people feeling disconnected from their communities, local hubs are vital in bringing people together all year round. In November 2018, the Waltham Forest Street Café was set up by local WIN member Jasmine Danish in collaboration with LoveLife Generation. Initially, the café was a few tables set up on a Sunday afternoon on a local street corner to offer residents an opportunity to stop and share a free hot drink and a chat. The project quickly grew, due to popular demand and extensive local support, to create a bustling community on the street. After pausing during lockdown, the project has now evolved into Chocolate and Chat led by Waltham Forest WIN Co-Chair Averil Pooten. This is run every Thursday during term time outside St. Barnabas Church in Waltham Forest and has become an intergenerational activity hub involving all faiths and none. Community hubs like these are run in neighbourhoods all over the country. Why not find one near you and keep the ‘great get together’ going?