Sitting on the Happy to Chat bench are Bridget Harvey and Tessa Munt. Behind are Wells City Council staff Nathan Bell and Dominic Butler, who helped install the bench, and Heads Up trustee Philip Welch.
Life is becoming less personal every year.
Bank branches close, we shop online more, communicate by text rather than speaking, and people walk the street wearing headphones in their own little world.
To counter this trend special benches have been set around the world that carry the same sign: “Happy to Chat bench. Sit here if you don’t mind someone stopping to say hello.”
Happy to Chat benches encourage people to start conversations and talk to each other, rather than being isolated and sometimes lonely.
Now one has been installed on the Recreation Ground in Wells by Heads Up which was made at the mental health charity’s woodwork workshop in South Horrington with money from a Somerset County Council grant.
“Thank you county councillor Tessa Munt for securing this grant and for your support of our charity,” said the charity’s service director Bridget Harvey, “and we are very pleased to work alongside Somerset Council with contracts to support vulnerable people in our society.”
Councillor Munt said: “I think this bench is brilliant. An absolutely fantastic way of getting to know people.”
Photo and Text Credit Philip Welch.