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HushFest is on the horizon. Cornwall’s festival of quietness, shaped by our community. |
This post was shaped within the Quiet Connections community. Some pieces are written anonymously; others come together through gentle collaboration. Either way, they come from lived experiences and quiet reflections from quieteers like you.
Our articles are here to offer understanding and encouragement to quieteers finding their way with confidence, connection, or a sense of belonging. If something here feels familiar or reassuring, you're warmly welcome to read more, join our Facebook Community or come along to a Meet Up whenever you're ready.
In a Meet Up, trust doesn’t arrive in any clear or defined way. It builds slowly over time, and most of the moments that shape it are ordinary enough that they’re easy to miss. Someone speaks and isn’t interrupted. Someone offers a smile or a kind word to another quieteer. A pause is left without…
People often arrive at a Quiet Connections Meet Up carrying a word they’ve been given about themselves. Shy. Introverted. Anxious. Sensitive. Sometimes all four at once, as though they are the same thing, or as though one explains the others. They are not the same thing. Understanding the differences matters, not just for the sake…
Hayle Meet Up opens on Monday 20th April from 1-3pm. We meet at the Annex at Hayle Daycare Centre. Find out more here. There’s a moment a lot of quieteers know well. You’ve heard about something, thought it might be for you, turned it over in your mind for a while. Maybe you’ve looked at…
Birthdays come with a lot of expectations. It can feel like, to have a “successful” birthday, you need to be surrounded by a massive group of friends, having a big, visible celebration. For many of us quieter people, these expectations can feel heavy when our birthdays roll around. It can feel like a challenge to…
Have you ever noticed someone struggling with something -carrying too many things, looking a little lost, trying to manage on their own at the end of an evening- and felt the pull to help, but held back? I have. More times than I’d like to admit. And the reason I held back wasn’t indifference. It…
I, Hayley, want to share something I’ve been thinking about for a while. An invitation… This might be obvious to some of you already, but Quiet Connections doesn’t belong to me. Nor does it belong to the team listed on the website. It belongs to you, and to all of us. I know people sometimes…
Hello Quieteers, This is a callout to any musicians, poets, writers, or performers who might be reading this. And more specifically, I am writing to those of you who are right now questioning whether you are “good enough” to call yourself a musician, poet, writer, or performer. Have you ever written a poem no one…
Many of us grow up believing that connection and closeness is created through talking, quick replies and confident story-telling. For some of us, that takes significant effort – especially with new people. Recently, eleven Quieteers met at Locked In Escape Rooms in Camborne. We split into two groups. I was in The Smokehouse Curse. The others…
There are parts of us that don’t rush to the surface – not hidden exactly; they’re simply not always invited out. Many of us know what it’s like to be described as the quiet one. The shy one. The one who hangs back. Over time, those descriptions can start to feel fixed, as if quietness…
Quietness is often treated as something fixed and defining. You are labelled early on, sometimes gently, sometimes carelessly. The quiet one. The shy one. The observer. The person who hangs back. Alongside those labels sits a familiar set of comparisons. Quiet or chatty. Introverted or outgoing. Confident or reserved. Visible or overlooked. For many people…
We’re Hiring: Join Quiet Connections as our Community Engagement & Volunteer Lead and help strengthen volunteer-led Meet Ups and community activity across Cornwall. Community Engagement & Volunteer Lead 24 hours per week, £26,780 pro rata. Home-based in Cornwall. About Quiet Connections Quiet Connections is a Cornwall-based Community Interest Company creating welcoming spaces for people who are…
Valentine’s Day tends to focus on one particular kind of love: romantic love. Cards, flowers, candlelit dinners, and declarations of pairing shape the story of connection that most often reaches the spotlight. For some, this story is comforting, even joyful. For others, it can quietly signal that love is only legitimate when it looks a…