Hi friends, we wanted to share some important information with you and let you know that 15-Minute Friendships will not be returning in 2025. The decision to bring the project to a close was not made lightly, and we are so very grateful to everybody who took part during our run. Transparency has always been important to us, so we have provided a little more insight into why this decision was made below for those who are interested. Before we get to all that though, we just wanted to say a huge thank you to all of our host venues who generously provided us with the space to run our sessions.
An Independent Project
The word 'ending' feels very finite and, if we're completely honest, we'd hoped to be able to reformat the project to make it more sustainable in the long-run. That said, 15-Minute Friendships was an independent project ran by an individual, and it required a lot of resources in terms of time, money, and administration. Due to the host working fulltime alongside the project, the idea of scaling 15-Minute Friendships into a charity/non-profit was never really viable.
It's also worth considering that not every venture has to run indefinitely. We feel as though 15-Minute Friendships served a purpose in the post-lockdown landscape where many people were struggling with their social needs. As time has gone on, we have found there has been less demand for the one-to-one style sessions we started out with.
Accessibility
When we launched 15-Minute Friendships, accessibility was one of our main priorities. We wanted to host multiple sessions a month across accessible venues throughout Leeds in the hopes of relieving some of the public-transport related limitations that city-centre exclusive activities posed. We also attempted to run online sessions to remove the need for travel altogether.
There were lots of reasons why this model wasn't necessarily functional. The changing nature of the venues made it difficult for individuals to attend from one month to the next. The kind of LGBTQIA+ friendly, low-alcohol spaces we had hoped to host in were often in smaller or listed buildings, which meant some accessibility adjustments couldn't always be met.
There was also a kind of irony that, in trying to make the project as accessible as possible for many different people, the host became more aware that their own accessibility needs as an autistic person weren't compatible with this model. We did our best to balance this by switching to fixed venues in the latter part of 2024, but found that the demands of fulltime employment, an increase in the cost of living, and an unreliable public transport system meant that 15-Minute Friendships was requiring a lot more in terms of energy and monetary investment than the host was able to provide.
What's Next
We will keep the 15-Minute Friendships website running for a month or two to ensure that everybody who needs to has the opportunity to read this blog post. We'll also be keeping the 15-Minute Friendships Instagram page visible for the time being as a way for people to contact us.
We are unsure if this project will ever make a re-appearance in the future, but speaking directly as the host, I am always looking for ways to become involved with, contribute to, and support the LGBTQIA+ community in Leeds. I am also very interested in collaborative projects, as these would be much more accessible to me in the long-term. If you have anything in mind that you would like to discuss, you can reach out to me via my personal Instagram here.
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