About the Welcome Coalition
Building a stronger infrastructure for welcome across the UK
The Welcome Coalition is a national network designed to support, inform, and amplify local welcoming efforts across the United Kingdom. We are bringing together communities, practitioners, organisations, researchers and people with lived experience who share a belief that everyone should be able to feel welcomed, connected and supported in the places they call home.
Across the UK, local organisations and communities are already creating extraordinary welcoming spaces and support systems for newcomers. Yet too often, this work happens in isolation, with limited opportunities to share learning, build evidence, influence policy or connect with others facing similar challenges. The Welcome Coalition exists to change that.
We are working to strengthen the infrastructure of welcome across the UK by connecting people and organisations, building a shared evidence base, and creating opportunities for collaboration and collective learning. Our goal is to help ensure that welcoming communities can thrive everywhere, not just in isolated pockets.
Our vision
We want to see a UK where welcome is not left to chance.
A UK where communities have the resources, knowledge and connections they need to support newcomers well. Where successful local approaches are shared and strengthened. Where lived experience informs decision-making. And where welcome is recognised as a vital part of creating stronger, more connected and more resilient places for everyone.
Together, we are building the foundations for a more welcoming future.
Our values
Inclusive
We believe everyone deserves to feel welcome and belong.
Collaborative
We work together across sectors, places and communities.
Evidence-informed
We learn from what works and build the evidence base for welcome.
People-centred
Lived experience guides our work and our decisions.
Hopeful
We are optimistic about the power of communities to create change.
Our story
How the Welcome Coalition came together, and where we’re heading.
- 2024
The seed
A group of organisations came together to explore how we could strengthen welcome across the UK.
- 2025
Building the network
We launched the Welcome Coalition, bringing partners together around a shared mission.
- 2026
Growing impact
Our directory and mapping tools launched, connecting people, places and practice.
- 2027+
Looking ahead
Expanding our reach and deepening our work to build stronger systems of welcome for all.
What is ‘welcome’?
Welcoming starts with relationships between people: the natural human desire to feel welcomed in a new place and to welcome others. When we talk about welcoming, we mean the support and conditions that help newcomers to settle, to navigate services, and to begin participating in community life. It combines practical assistance with the relationships that build trust, connection and a sense of belonging.
Our leadership
The Welcome Coalition is led by four organisations bringing together research, frontline practice, partnership-building and communications expertise.
Neighbourly Lab (opens in a new tab)
A social research and innovation organisation working to build more supportive and inclusive communities, and to strengthen social connection and belonging. Over the past four years its work has explored how welcome is designed and experienced across the UK: in libraries and leisure centres, in city squares and digital neighbourhoods, and in the everyday gestures that help people feel at home.
Pickwell Foundation (opens in a new tab)
Rooted in North Devon and working nationally, the Pickwell Foundation welcomes people who have been forced to flee, and supports volunteer groups across the UK to do the same through Community Sponsorship, including Homes for Ukraine and the Afghan resettlement schemes. It runs a weekly drop-in hub open to all newcomers, chairs national coalitions including the Community Sponsorship Alliance, and focuses on what makes resettlement succeed: housing, language, employment and connection.
Good Faith Partnership (opens in a new tab)
Helps create solutions to society’s most challenging problems, working at the intersection of sectors, disciplines and communities. It convenes unlikely relationships and turning shared intent into practical action, from advisory services to innovation programmes and the incubation of new initiatives. At the heart of its work is a simple belief: that innovation happens when we step outside our circles.
IMIX (opens in a new tab)
A migration communications organisation working to challenge and humanise public narratives around migration and displacement. It supports people and organisations across the sector to communicate with confidence, clarity and care, helping more human stories of migration to be heard.
In their words
“Across the UK, people seeking safety arrive through many different routes, and our welcome infrastructure must be able to hold them all. Community Sponsorship will become an even more crucial element of that story, but it depends on, and benefits from, the strength of the wider ecosystem. This project will map that landscape, surface what works, and guide investment where it’s most needed, helping communities offer a confident, coherent welcome to every newcomer.”Susannah Baker MBE (opens in a new tab), Founder and Director, The Pickwell Foundation
“Showing welcome and being hospitable is in the DNA of our communities across the UK. It’s part of who we are. But making sure everyone has the chance to experience that welcome takes intentional effort and resources, particularly given the current political climate. That’s why we have come together as leaders and organisations to create the Welcome Coalition: to add our expertise and efforts together, and to resource and equip local groups to do what they do best and provide a warm welcome for all newcomers.”David Barclay (opens in a new tab), Chief Executive, Good Faith Partnership
Be part of the Coalition
Join the Community of Practice, the Research & Learning Group, or the Policy & Narrative Group, and help build a more connected, informed and impactful welcome sector.