It’s been a really busy month, with mini-breaks in Spain and Italy, a two-day conference in Bradford and trips to Warm Welcome Spaces in Leeds and Reading.
I truly delighted in the company of my two gorgeous girls for four days in Spain before Easter. We enjoyed delicious food, swimming, mud baths in the healing mineral-rich mud and waters of Las Charcas south of Alicante and some hilarious card games. Such a lovely time and so long overdue…
Then at the start of May I flew to Perugia in Umbria in Italy for a couple of days with some much loved school friends. Cue pizza, wine and a hot tub all thoroughly enjoyed.
In the past month I’ve visited two Warm Welcome Spaces, one in an old fire station in Gipton, Leeds and the other in a church in Earley, Reading. It’s such a joy to visit these community hubs, supporting people – many of them especially vulnerable to the ridiculous current cost of living and dealing with issues from loneliness to health and disability challenges.
You can read about these visits on the warmwelcome.uk website and there are plenty of ways to support the Warm Welcome Campaign, not least giving us a follow on social media @warmwelcomeuk on Instagram.
If you know a community space that is opening up to give people a free warm welcome, do encourage them to join our campaign. We always have news on funding opportunities for community spaces, plus tons of resources and support for keeping these important hubs going. Numbers of Warm Welcome Spaces have grown hugely over the winter, up by 30%, and we expect even more to join when winter rolls around again.
Then this week I helped out with the comms and PR around the Creative Cities Convention, this year held in the 2025 UK City of Culture: Bradford.
The CCC is the only two-day conference for people working in TV, film and digital media held outside London. A fabulous time was had by all, with scene setting presentations by BBC DG Tim Davie who talked about the amount of BBC content now made outside of London (50% and climbing) and YouTube UK CEO ck Alison Lomax among the more than 60 speakers at the event. Also present were execs from ITV, Channel 4, Amazon, Sky, UKTV, Channel 5 and All3 Media plus independent producers and distributors.
It was such a joy to be at a TV conference after a gap of several years while I’ve been working in the arts and, now, in the social justice sector. I was also working with pals I’ve known now for 25+ years from the good old days of working in the media in London. We had so many belly laughs, so good for the soul, and I can report that Bradford in the spring sunshine looks fantastic. It’s well worth a visit this year while they celebrate being UK City of Culture 2025 with a year-long festival of events and festivities. And of course you’ve got the beautiful county of Yorkshire to explore at the same time.
You should also watch hit BBC series Virdee on iPlayer, all set in Bradford with shots to rival Hollywood. It’s superbly acted and has amazing writing from A A Dhand, who spent years working in a shop while writing his six detective Harry Virdee novels until he finally got a break with Penguin for its first publishing deal for a south Asian man, then the BBC drama commission.
Today, I’m back home, looking forward to a really quiet weekend and a recharge. Toodle pip.
Lucy Rouse PR Blog 