Coffee shops are important for different people in different places. I have argued in some of my previous work that coffee shops are important spaces for people to connect, and important places of community creation. For the next couple of years, I’m exploring some aspects of this in relation to social isolation and loneliness as part of a research project for the Chatty Café scheme.
The Chatty Café scheme has several elements which are designed to help reduce social isolation and loneliness. It began with the creation of Chatter and Natter tables, predominantly in cafes and coffee shops, where a designated table would be allocated for people who were happy to sit and chat with others. The scheme grew, and after the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic has also expanded to one-to-one phone calls from volunteers and online Chatty Café sessions.
I am working with the Chatty Café scheme to try and understand the impact of the Chatty Café services on peoples live in terms of reducing loneliness and social isolation. The research project, funded by the National Lottery Community Fund and Tudor Trust seeks to explore the impact of the services, but also aims to try and find out where improvements could be made to inform future activities.
An initial stage of this research is to try and gather views on the Chatty Café scheme services through a short survey. The research at this stage focuses on England as this is predominantly where a lot of the activities take place, but I would welcome anyone to complete the survey as it would be fantastic to gain views from people further afield too.
If you have a few minutes to spare it would be really helpful if you could complete the survey, whether you have encountered the Chatty Café scheme before, or not.
Please follow this link to complete the short survey: https://bit.ly/3uwZboa
There will be more on this research, as it develops, and as the findings become available.
You can find out more about the Chatty Café Scheme here: https://thechattycafescheme.co.uk/
cafespaces 
Hi Jennifer, I’m currently researching about cafes that employ homeless people to tackle this ever growing issue, with a view to open one in my hometown in France. I went through your blog and saw a mention of a global map of social cafes, however the link doesn’t work. I was wondering if I could find it somewhere or if you could point me in the right direction? Basically I’m looking to gather info on how exactly they get people into training, employment and how do they facilitate accommodation for them (i.e do they work in conjunction with social housing organisations etc).
I’m at the very beginning of this project and gathering facts and info so far 🙂
Thanks a lot and hope you can help!
All the best
Caroline
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