About Bridges for Communities:

Bridges for Communities works to make Bristol a city where people live well together with difference. For over 15 years, we've brought people together — not as helpers and helped, but as neighbours building something together.

Whether you’ve lived here for a few days or all your life, we work to create the new connections between neighbours and communities that grow understanding, trust and belonging. Through shared meals, walks, classes and conversations: we help real relationships form.

In 2025, more than 3,000 people took part and over 4,000 volunteer hours went into making it happen.

Autumn Campaign: Responding to division

Division gets a lot of attention.

For some of our neighbours, that's not just background noise. It's being afraid to walk down the street and the feeling of not belonging in the city they now call home.

But most days, in most parts of Bristol, people are getting on well together — sharing a meal, going for a walk, having a conversation with someone new.

This Autumn, we're asking you to help us keep that going. Join us in creating safe, welcoming spaces where people can meet, listen and build relationships across difference. Demand for this is growing and our waiting list is getting longer.

This kind of work doesn't always fit neatly into short-term grants. Trust takes time to build, and it can't restart from scratch every time a grant ends. Donations from people like you let us keep experienced staff in place, respond quickly when a need comes up and try new things - including reaching neighbourhoods and communities we haven't worked with before.

That's what this campaign is for - not one project, but the foundation underneath all of them.

You are invited:

Creating connection can start with something small. You could donate to this campaign, set up a regular donation or share this page with your network. Whatever you're able to do, thank you.

What your donation supports:

Befriend — A regular one-to-one friendship between a local volunteer and someone seeking sanctuary. Small and simple, but it adds up.

Peace Feast — Food has a way of putting people at ease that words alone can't. Peace Feast brings people together over a shared meal and provides a safe space to get to know neighbours from different cultures. In the words of one guest:

Bristol Schools Linking — We twin school classes from different parts of the city, so children get to know people outside their usual school community. This builds confidence and challenges assumptions early.

Walk With Me — A walk through Bristol's parks and green spaces is a simple thing, but for someone newly arrived and waiting on an asylum claim, it can be the first time the city starts to feel like somewhere they belong. One family told us:

Stitching Together — Sewing doesn't need a shared language. Women from all over the world sit down together each week and, stitch by stitch, build friendships. As one volunteer described it:

RefuLingua — Our language classes are taught by tutors from refugee and migrant backgrounds. Many are teaching for the first time, gaining confidence and paid experience alongside their students. As one student put it:

Welcome Hubs — In the accommodation where people seeking sanctuary are staying while their claims are processed, we run weekly sessions that turn a temporary room into somewhere with people in it who know your name. As one volunteer said:

Listening Spaces — Sometimes people just need a safe space to actually hear each other out. Listening Spaces bring people with different views, beliefs or life experiences together to talk — on subjects from faith to homelessness to the Colston statue — with someone there to make sure everyone gets heard.