Sometimes the simple ideas are the best. The Friendship Bench Chat started out as a conversation about benches and ended up being about talking to friends, sitting on a bench, outside of course.
Having encountered a problem getting a bench installed in a Birmingham park the City of Nature Green Champions discussed the importance of park benches and some of the issues that can come with them. Basically – are they worth the cost and the effort?
To answer this we need to ask “Why do we need benches?” It’s no surprise to find we aren’t the first people to ask this question or to try to answer it. A quick internet search shows that the importance of benches is well understood and documented. The aptly named “Bench Project” even resulted in a bench manifesto: https://the-bench-project.weebly.com/manifesto.html
One obvious point in the manifesto is: “Sitting on benches supports healthy everyday routines by enabling people to spend longer outside. These opportunities to rest can be restorative for mental health and support local walking when personal mobility is limited.”
In our discussion the idea of school Friendship Benches or Buddy Benches came up. A Buddy Bench is a place on playgrounds for pupils to sit if they are lonely or have no one to play with. When other children see someone on the bench, it is an indication that the child is looking for a friend and should be asked by someone to join in the school-time fun.
A further search found The Friendship Bench organisation: https://www.friendshipbenchzimbabwe.org/about-us
The Friendship Bench is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) registered in Zimbabwe. Their vision is a Friendship Bench within walking distance for all. With this inspiration, their mission is to get people out of “kufungisisa” – depression & anxiety – by creating safe spaces and a sense of belonging in communities to improve mental wellbeing and enhance quality of life.
Agreeing that benches are a very important social tool for health and wellbeing, we wanted to get people talking about benches and supporting them as an important part of park infrastructure. So the idea of the “Friendship Bench Chat” was born. To start with it was going to be chatting about friendship benches, but it quickly became friends sitting on a bench chatting, but either of these are a great idea and you can do both as we find out when we started going out to meet people for a Friendship Bench Chat.
There are just five steps to a Friendship Bench Chat so why not give it a go and share your experience with us, we would love to see photos as well.
You can download a copy of the flyer here:
If you need to find your nearest greenspace you can search here: https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/findapark
You can listen into some of our chats here:
If you want to share your stories please contact us here:
Naturally Birmingham Future Parks Project 
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