The Dorset group ‘Chitter Chatter Club’ aims to reduce loneliness by providing safe places for people to meet up, play games and be who they are.
Based on Facebook, group members meet up in various cafes around the Dorset area including Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole to chat and play games with their friendly volunteers welcoming everyone in.
Group creator, Anne Anderson, had problems with loneliness feeling isolated after her move from the North to the South.
She said: “ I’ve always struggled with the Southern ideology. Everywhere I went, I said, good morning, hello, and no one replied. Everybody looked really stunned and I felt really shunned and I didn’t have the confidence to go and say it again. So I did that for 10 years and then after that I just gave up and I just became really socially isolated and very, very lonely.”
She created the club in 2022, after a while of feeling lonely herself, to bring people who may be struggling together. The club has helped many people in times where they felt like they needed someone.
Miss Anderson wants to help people get their confidence back and help with people’s mental health after everything Covid has done to society, and sees fitting in as changing yourself and not truly belonging, wanting all people who come in to be themselves and feel like they’ve always belonged there.
She said: “ They’re struggling with loneliness. It’s a really vulnerable time of their life to come through the door and come in and sit with a group of people. They come in and sit down and slowly join the group. They come in grey and they leave pink.”
The group now has nearly 300 followers on Facebook with anywhere between 15-20 people coming to the meetings, and is said to have brought over a thousand people together so far, but is constantly looking for more people to join in.
Loneliness seems to be a rising problem in the UK, with findings from the government community life survey that have found that during October 2023 to March 2024, 7% of people in the UK reported that they felt lonely often or always which is an increase of 1% from 2022/23.
A study by the government in 2023 showed that nearly all students say they felt lonely at least once during the last academic year, yet almost half have hidden feelings of loneliness because they fear no one will understand.
Anne would like to do something about this and convince more students to come and join them.
She had previously attended an event at the university to try and encourage students to join.
She said: “ When students first come, they might go into their room and then they, bit by bit, lose a bit of confidence to go out in the corridor and go downstairs and mix and they want to get their work done. They want to get a first.”
“And I think university is all about judgment. You’re judging yourself. The professors are judging you. You’re judging the professors. You know, education is a business and you know, all these targets to me and yeah, I think that period of insecurity and judgment and being away from home and landing on that island of judgment because that’s my experience.”
She believes that the club would do well for students, but also anyone who is experiencing loneliness or just wants to spend some time around other people, and urges them to give it a go.
“ You can just come, put the phone down for an hour, play cards, play UNO, chat with the people around with them, feel safe with no anxiety around new people, to be able to learn communications, talking to people, different people from different courses.”
The group meets up weekly in different areas of Dorset: Bournemouth on a Monday, Tuesday in Christchurch, Wednesday in Canford Cliffs and Thursday in Weymouth.
Anyone interested in joining can see the events here.
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