Blue Monday with Employment Support
Monday 20th January 2020 was this year’s Blue Monday, the so-called most depressing day of the year. The days are short, cold and grey, the brightness and celebration from Christmas is well and truly over and on top of that, the credit card bills arrive. Whether it’s a fabrication from travel companies looking to give people an excuse to buy a holiday or not, it’s certainly a good time of year to cheer up the people of Bristol with a refreshing and positive event!
This year Chris Mitchel l from the Employment Support team alongside National Careers Service, DWP, Carers Support Service, Bristol Water and #Jobnetwork Bristol organised and hosted Blue Monday at The Galleries, Broadmead. This event brought together organisations from across Bristol to help people with wellbeing, support, advice, jobs and apprenticeships. It is a regular event, but this year’s was bigger than ever with 75 organisations on site to support residents of Bristol.
People could get information about health and well-being, education and training, energy saving, housing and benefits and money management. Not only this, but they could also enjoy acupuncture and massage, arts and crafts and live music from Joe’s Jazz Band. On top of that the chance to win a digital slow cooker in the prize draw.
The Ways2Work and Future Bright teams were there to tell people about ways to get back to work and how they can improve their careers. Other teams from Employment, Skills and Learning were also there, On Site came to promote their apprenticeships and Community Learning had a fantastic variety of courses to promote to help people improve their skills.
There was a fantastic turnout! There were a lot of people there to count and all moving around! Our best guess is that 770 people came and chatted to stallholders about ways to improve their 2020.
Chris said, “It’s really great to be able to do something positive to overturn the winter blues which involves a much wider support network than usual. These groups, such as CAB, CSE, Bristol Mind, help the people of Bristol to thrive. For this Blue Monday, we delivered a jobs fair at the same time because a job or new job might be the answer to some of the Blues.”
If you’re looking to improve your 2020, there are dozens of organisations across Bristol just waiting to help you do it.
