Aid Box Community
Aid Box taking part in Our Freedom project, image by Jon Aiken
The Aid Box Community Women’s Group has been meeting at Trinity since January 2023, creating a regular women-only space to meet new people, share experiences, learn new skills and, importantly, simply spend time together. The group is free to attend and runs during term time.
Aid Box Community was founded in Bristol in 2015, initially in response to the refugee crisis in Europe. The organisation grew from a volunteer-led effort to deliver essential supplies to refugee camps into a Bristol-based charity providing practical support, community, activities and a welcoming place to people seeking asylum and refugees. Its work today includes a Free Shop and Welcome Hub, welfare and crisis support, befriending, activity groups and community trips.
The Weekly Women’s Group at Trinity is part of that wider work. Aid Box describes its activity groups as spaces where people can share skills, learn, laugh, look after their wellbeing and develop a sense of belonging. For the women who attend, the Monday sessions offer a chance to build friendships and connections in a women-only environment, helping to tackle the isolation that can come with displacement and starting a new life in a new city.
The sessions are varied with the group takung part in activities including sewing, arts and crafts, mindfulness, massage, cooking and shared meals. There is also plenty of time for the less structured but equally important parts of coming together for tea, chatting, sharing knowledge and experiences and getting to know one another.
As part of the partnership, Trinity provides creative opportunities for the group, giving women the chance to explore different artforms and contribute their own ideas and experiences through creativity. This has included the group taking part in Our Freedom: Then and Now project in 2025. Working with Bristol City Poet Sukina Noor and Trinity curator Edson Burton, women from Aid Box joined other local communities to explore what freedom means to them. Their experiences and words became part of a wider creative process that went on to inform a national touring exhibition.
The partnership gives space for people to come together, make things, share stories and take part in the cultural life of the city. Aid Box brings deep relationships with refugee and asylum-seeking communities, while Trinity can offer space, creative resources and opportunities to participate and shapce cultural life in Bristol and the UK.
