0-Love Southampton 2022-2023

Our response to the Ukraine and Cost of
Living crises has enabled us to establish an
informal process that can be replicated in the
future. It created two clear opportunities for us to
use our networks and links to proactively respond to
two important issues that the city was facing. We
believe that we could take a similar approach to any future
issues that arise and would gladly continue to work with the
council and others to distribute requests and key information
to the church and Christian community within Southampton
when needed.
B: Monthly newsletter
The first issue of our newsletter focused on informing readers how they
might be able to help with the Ukrainian crisis and also introduced the new set
up at Love Southampton post-pandemic.
From June onwards our aim was to share good news stories about what the churches
were doing in Southampton, share information about what we were doing as Love
Southampton, communicate changes to our website, advertise important upcoming
events, and also focus on a specific initiative that was being run by a church or Christian
charity each month. This is a time consuming activity, but the newsletter is a really
important tool in our effort to understand and promote the work of the churches within
Southampton.
We would love the newsletter to be used more by our partner churches and charities, but
some are already using it to advertise jobs and events.
By the end of 2022 our newsletter was being emailed out monthly to around 70 churches in
Southampton, as well as 15-20 key organisations and contacts in the city. In addition to this,
our newsletter is sent to over 300 people who had signed up to receive information via our
‘mailchimp’ account.
C: Participating in wider Faith groups
Continuing with our goal of engaging with Southampton more widely, we joined the
Standing Advisory Committee for Religious Education (SACRE) as a co-opted member.
SACRE arrange several meetings a year to liaise with a variety of faith representatives across
the city on matters of collective worship and religious education, and then feed this into
Southampton City Council and the national arm of SACRE. Love Southampton joined as a
non-voting member and we look forward to learning more about and contributing to the
work that churches and Christian charities are doing in our local schools.
We have also formed closer ties with the Southampton Council of Faiths, for example when
organising our Faith Covenant relaunch event.
We have made strong progress this year in developing relationships and raising our profile
with the wider city community and we want to continue to build on this in the future.
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