Community and Social Opportunities
Ensuring we have the opportunity to take part in social activities is important for our wellbeing. These links provide a wide range of fun activities for you to get involved in outside of Paul’s Place. There is also a section to help you assess if a venue or activity is accessible with Euan’s guide for example.
Finding accessible venues
Find out if a venue is accessible with Euan’s Guide. Type the name of the place you are going to and read reviews written by disabled people.
Sociability: an app that shows you accessible places, e.g. restaurants and cafes. These have also been reviewed by disabled people, in fact, the team behind the app is also disabled so have tested some sites out themselves! They are a passionate company that wants to make sure disabled people can feel more confident going out.
Making friends
Sense Charity: Buddies programme helps people with all kinds of disabilities make new friends. They host weekly online chats, to help you expand your community of friends online. They started the programme during lockdown to help people struggling with loneliness. Please note, this is a virtual scheme only, with sessions taking place via phone or videocall and as such no individual face-to face meetups are permitted outside of sessions for safeguarding reasons. If you’re looking for a “buddy” visit their website today.
Southern Brookes: Bringing communities together. Southern Brooks has lots of wellbeing events to get involved in. Not only will you learn new ways to look after your health and wellbeing but you can make new friends too! More information about their courses is on their website.
Being part of our day facility is a great way to make friends. The people you will meet at Paul’s Place, can become your life-long friends.
Something different
Yuup Experiences Bristol: Search experiences from craft workshops to special dinners, foraging and theatre. This is the place to find like-minded people who share your hobby. Option to select Wheelchair Accessible Experiences.
Music Groups
Batala Drummers: are a big drumming group. Their group performances are big and powerful! You can learn to be in their group and make some new friends along the way!
Bristol Riff Raff Choir meets in the city for regular choir sessions. An uplifting and fun hobby for those who love to sing!
Disability Advocacy and Voluntary Groups
BDEF: Bristol Disability Equality Forum is a voluntary group that meets both in-person and online. They are working on various projects to make sure the council makes decisions informed by disabled people themselves. You can join BDEF if you are a Bristol resident. You can email them via their website or call them on 0117 914 0528.
SGDEN: South Gloucestershire Disability Equality Network
Paul’s Place is working in partnership with SGDEN. Since April Paul’s Place has taken over the employment of the DEN Manager Sophie Wainwright from South Gloucestershire CVS. The SGDEN remains an independent disability-led organisation and the aim of working in partnership with us is to ensure that more disabled people will get involved, in adding their voices to the issues that matter to them in South Gloucestershire.
Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living: For more information, please contact | E-mail: bristol.ilag@gmail.com | Text: 0 7 5 0 5 4 1 4 3 1 9. As the name suggests, the group wants to work with disabled people to raise awareness of disability issues and support people to live more independently.
WECIL: Independent living support for Disabled People. WECIL is a well-known local service that can advise you to help you live more independently.
If you would like to provide feedback on health services in the area, for the South Glos residents there is the Healthwatch organisation. To find out more about what they do, visit their website: Healthwatch
Find your community on Social Media
If you know what to look for, if you follow the right people and ensure your privacy settings are up to a good standard – then social media is a wonderful tool to connect with other disabled people, as well as raise awareness of disability issues. You can chat with others in similar situations and join them in their fight for accessibility. There are so many brilliant people sharing their stories on social media and highlighting the inaccessibility they face on a daily basis. Below is a list of people to follow to get you started;
Sam Renke, Nina Tame, Simply Emma Travel Blogger.
There are so many to discover! Instagram especially, has a big community of people sharing their stories. If any members (service users) at Paul’s Place want help with who to follow, take a look at some of the Instagram accounts we follow on our social media!