We are in our fifth year running Christmas at Birmingham. This year we titled our Christmas programme as the ‘Season of Wellbeing and Celebration’ with an aim of ‘an inclusive and enjoyable Christmas for all’. This consisted of a Carol Concert, 3 Wellbeing Days, 1 Sports Day, 1 Member Celebration and our Christmas Day event.

We kickstarted our Season of Wellbeing and Celebration with our Carol Concert, held on Tuesday 3rd December at St Martin in the Bullring. We welcomed 207 guests including the Vice-Lord Lieutenant and The Lord Mayor. We had a wonderful evening as we gathered together to have a sing-song, honour our achievements of 2019, and look forward to a future without homelessness. We would like to thank our 3 member speakers, our Chief Executive Jon Sparkes, Skylight Director Matthew Green and Reverend Jeremy Allcock for speaking during the event and the wonderful Birmingham Festival Choral Society for performing 3 songs for us (and making all the other carols we sung sound much better!)

Finally, we would like to thank all our supporters for raising a huge £986.05, our amazing volunteers from JLL for supporting us on the night and St Martin in the Bullring for hosting our event with us.

Next up we had our Wellbeing and Sports days. At our wellbeing days we welcomed between 31 – 67 guests at each event, who were able to enjoy a variety of activities including: yoga, haircuts and styling, musical theatre, mental health workshops, massages, poetry workshops, arts and craft tables, pedicures, nail painting, facials, holistic therapy sessions, health checks, Pilates, mindfulness and so much more! And at our sports day we took part in some health competition with a football tournament and Cricket coaching session.

We served 191 hot meals over these days all donated by a range of Birmingham restaurants and caterers: Wagamama’s, West Midland’s Jerk Centre, Zen Metro Thai and FrancoManca pizzas – Thank you!  We also couldn’t have run these events without the generous support from our venue providers: The Studio, Action Indoor Sports and Gallery Church.

“My experience today was very nice for me, it was fun. I had lunch. I really enjoyed the musical theatre class. It was motivational, inspirational, fantastic and fun! I enjoyed myself so much today I hope the musical theatre can continue” – Member, Crisis Skylight Birmingham, Wellbeing Day 23rd December 2019.

And finally, the big day arrived – Christmas! On Christmas Day we welcomed 94 guests to our event where we began with coffee, breakfast and good conversation. This wonderful atmosphere continued throughout the day where we had chill out spaces, massages, movies, arts and crafts and more on offer leading us into an amazing Christmas lunch. Our guests continued into the afternoon playing bingo and taking part in the quiz until it was time to go home. All guests received amazing goody-bags which held essential items, small games, toiletries and food – all which was donated by our amazing community.

  “I am very grateful for Crisis! Fantastic food, lovely company. 10/10. Merry Christmas” – Member, Crisis Skylight Birmingham, Christmas Day 2019

This year we also took steps towards being eco-friendlier by gifting our guests re-usable coffee cups and water bottles as they arrived to use throughout the day, this was kindly donated by Total Merchandise and JLL Fitness – thank you.

Of course, the Thank You’s don’t stop there… we couldn’t have run our whole Season of Wellbeing and Celebration without our awesome volunteers. This year we welcomed a team of 121 volunteers.

You were an amazing team who helped us by setting-up our events, cooking or serving an amazing lunch, entertaining our guests, driving minibuses, cleaning up, painting nails, doing massages, taking a yoga class, running an arts and craft session, packing and handing out goody-bags ...
and most importantly thank you for all the laughs, smiles and great conversations you have been a part of.

“A big thank you to all the staff and volunteers for everything today. Enjoyed myself immensely and you all made me very happy.” – Member, Crisis Skylight Birmingham, Christmas Day 2019