The Florrie is offering over 40 hours of free classes every week in 2,024

The Florrie in L8 is bringing back its free classes and courses for 2024 with more than 40 hours every week covering everything from yoga to ukulele, cycling and French.

With volunteers running each of the sessions, the aim is to stop anyone of any age feeling isolated and get people learning new skills without the barrier of cost.

There are 20 different classes running Monday to Friday, mostly focused around health and wellbeing, music and arts.

They’ve become a major feature of The Florrie’s work and hundreds of people benefit from a chance to get together.

Timo Tierney, Community Coordinator at The Florrie, says keeping the courses free so everyone can join is hugely important.

“Someone might be thinking, I want to start a Zumba class to feel good about myself in January but it costs £7 per session – added up over the month that’s a lot of money if you’re unemployed or low income or you’ve got kids, whatever the reason.

“We realise that in L8, where we are, those £7s can be hard to come by for people but money should never be an object to people learning something and improving their wellbeing so we don’t want to outprice anyone.

“We do have a donation bucket in reception so if people come along and they can afford to put in something, whether it’s 50p, £1 or a fiver, those donations do go a long way but there’s no pressure.”

Timo says people have a variety of reasons for wanting to get involved in classes at The Florrie.

“They all get something different from coming here, but one of the big things is just meeting other people.

“Social isolation is a massive problem, some people don’t go out and speak to anyone for a week or two weeks.

“I know how hard it can be to come to somewhere you’ve never been before, on your own. But I guarantee that once they make that first step straight away we try to take that anxiety away and once they’ve been to one class they’ll usually come to another one. Then they start building relationships with people as well as doing something they really enjoy.”

Timo alongside fellow musician Jamie Webster and the Florrie guitar group

With men’s mental health a major issue, one of the biggest groups The Florrie runs its Men’s Walking Group every Monday and Friday morning. That started around a year ago and now has more than 100 members who raised thousands of pounds with a 24-hour walkathon in October last year.

“Men come from all over the city to go for a walk,” says Timo. “They meet here for 10.30am, have a tea and a cereal bar in the café, then go off on the walk, usually 3 to 5miles. It’s all ages, some are coming for health and some wellbeing, some to get out of the house, to get fitter, or because they’re unemployed or newly retired.

“They all met up on Christmas Day in Sefton Park even though we were shut, and we had Andy Robertson from Liverpool – who’s talked quite openly about suffering with his mental health in the past – invite us down to Melwood to walk around there with him.”

Timo says everyone gets something out of the courses including the volunteers who make them happen.

“There are a lot of skilled people out there who are volunteers who are either not working or have got a few extra hours on their hands.

“We have a very small staff team here so our volunteers are so important to making this place tick over.

“We did 500 Christmas dinners for older people in two days and that was all because of the volunteers who gave their time to support us.

“When people come and say they want to volunteer, the first thing I always ask is, ‘what do you like doing?’ because to get the best from someone you’ve got to make sure that they’re leaving here feeling it’s been worthwhile for them and feeling better than when they came in.

“It’s as important for the person doing the volunteering as for the person doing the class.”