News
Prime Minister’s Points of Light Award
The Prime Minister’s daily Points of Light award recognises outstanding individual volunteers – people who are making a change in their community. Alex Hoskyn the scheme’s founder, was chosen on Blue Monday for the positive changes to loneliness that the scheme has brought to the UK. In a personal letter to Alex, Prime Minister Boris …
Social Isolation
As part of a competition we are involved in called “Tech to Connect” I have been looking into the differences between social isolation and loneliness. The competition is focused on reducing social isolation in England and its interesting to know that it is quite a different issue to loneliness – even though the two often …
Strangers then friends
Blogs can be really hard to write, you don’t know whether to go deep and meaningful or light and breezy. You think of ideas when driving, at work; all times you forget or can’t write the idea down then when you try and remember.. poof its gone. I think for today I am going to …
New addition to the Chatty Cafe Team
Hi everyone, I am Jenny, Alex’s sister, and I can now announce after months of helping out, that I’m officially on the team! I started out in January assisting Alex (who is a full time social worker) with the scheme. I recall it only taking me a few hours a day to get through everything …
Nesta Tech to Connect
We are thrilled to announce we have been selected as one of the top 10 finalists in the Nesta Tech to Connect Challenge! Nesta and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport have launched the challenge to support charities, social enterprises, and social tech ventures across England to tackle social isolation using technology. Wish …
A recent talk from the Inside Government conference on loneliness. July 2019.
Hello my name is Alex Hoskyn and in April 2017 I started The Chatty Café Scheme which encourages cafes and other venues to designate a Chatter & Natter table. This is where customers can sit if they are happy to talk to other customers. It’s a simple concept and our aims are to reduce loneliness …
A recent talk from the Inside Government conference on loneliness. July 2019. Read More »
Greater Manchester Health & Care Champion Awards – The Chatty Cafe Scheme won the Award for Innovation! Thank you to everyone that voted for us!
On 5th July 2019 our founder Alex attended the awards at the Manchester Museum of Science & Industry and was thrilled to win the Award for Innovation!
New table talkers!
We now have 3 sided table talkers for the Chatter & Natter tables! They are better for the environment than the plastic stands and have ideas for conversation starters on them aswell as the story of how the scheme began…
Chatty Cafes in Canada!
4 cafes have now joined the scheme in Canada! Welcome Canada!