It means so much to us to have you join us here and while we prepare and plan to open our weekly pop up space for families, we are thinking of the many families who will be welcomed into the space.
In our first update, we want to share some of our plans with you as there are many stages to this process. We are a husband (Jason) and wife (Tash) and little 5yo (J) team with a little 2yo who will also be part of the fun!
Our vision is to create and open a space for us and people like us - a space to be yourself, a space to play, to eat and to discover new friendships.
This is the heart of Philo.
We are so grateful for the support of our supportive friends and family who are in many ways our personal village.
The first months of the pandemic hitting the UK gave us a very real insight as to what life looks like when you're own. Being pregnant with our second while working and supporting our 3yos learning and then caring for our newborn was really a lot on our own and while we hope none of us will never have to experience such isolation again - we are aware of some of the effects the pandemic still has on different families in the community.
So this is our work and our hope - that no one will feel lonely, or feel like they have no one to call. Everybody needs a friend. The beauty of waiting to open is that we have time to fine tune the details and connect with specialist around us who can help us improve the plan to transform the canvas that's before us in our very local area. It's exciting, it's scary but it's a dream and thank you for being a part of this journey.
Look our for a very important update this week on how you can be involved in helping make this dream of building our community together.
Love, The Shields