In the 3 months since I started the public living room, I have seen a loyal attendance of around 4 or 5 people, plus a regular churn of new faces. Attendees come from all backgrounds, ages, and nationalities. We have enjoyed random chats about all sorts, from haircuts, second hand shops, book recommendations, regional accents, baking, the cost of a pint, and Scotland’s history, to the more serious issues of energy bills and living alone. It is the feelings these weekly gatherings have generated which have given me glimpses of the power of strangers connecting with one another to bring about change. We have had fun, and demonstrated empathy, compassion, and even flashes of affection. These feelings have transcended social differences and political orientations. We have listened to and respected one another in ways rarely found in encounters on social media.

In a 2020 study by Sheffield Hallam University (Friends and Purpose: Evaluation of Camerados Public Living Rooms), 60% of public living room goers felt that something had changed for them as a result of using a public living room. Of these people, 77% felt less alone, 83% felt more able to help others, 90% of people felt happier, and 62% felt more confident. However, looking at the effects and potential for effects in a less individualistic way, I believe that there is something far bigger to come out of these weekly get-togethers. Connecting with one another with feelings of care is important for social change because it is within ordinary relationships that people learn how to nurture and feel for others, intimately, locally and distally (Lynch et al., 2021). The shared perception of a situation we require for informal conversations builds up over time to create a deep mutual understanding and sense of identity. This is said to be the foundation of a social bond (Scheff, 2006). Social bonds are inherently loaded with emotion, we feel positive and negative emotions more acutely and intensely. We work to maximise the positive and minimise the negative emotions within our interactions; putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes – or, living in the mind of the other – is to feel their emotions, and this is an act of caring when we strive to promote good feelings in them; we anticipate what they need in the conversation and act in their interest. Thus, over time we nurture our skills of thinking with care and compassion. Nurturing a disposition towards care could undermine the competitiveness and individualizing processes of modern capitalist economic, political, and social systems, and draw attention to the interdependence that shapes all our lives (Cox, 2010). Conversations amongst a heterogeneous group of people act as a collective caring practice when they enable people to hear of and learn about the many injustices of everyday life, spurring moral indignation and making these issues politically actionable (Lynch et al, 2021). For example, one gentleman told us of his longstanding battle with a large energy firm, who had erroneously demanded vast sums of money for energy he had not used. The conversation generated a sense of solidarity with the man and his plight, which resulted in several people in the group swapping email addresses and promising to get to work on Twitter to “make a big noise” about it. No doubt there are many other outcomes of these blossoming relationships which I have not observed or captured, but I look forward to noticing some of them over time!

I did not set out to turn my public living room into a pilot study of relational activism, but this is the nature of sociology – it gives you the tools to use your sociological imagination in the everyday, which, in my opinion, makes life a fascinating journey!