As Community Safety Week came to a close last week, we took a moment to reflect on the enriching few days filled with events designed to upskill, empower, and educate our community members.
Fleet Street Quarter and Culture Mile BID teamed up to offer a series of events across neighbouring districts throughout the end of February. We kicked off the week with an informative conflict management training session delivered by Safer Business Network that engaged local workers on strategic de-escalation techniques, communicating effectively and understanding best practice in the workplace. With over 20 different businesses in the room ranging from hospitality to security professionals, industry expertise was shared and applied in real-life scenarios.
Continuing our ongoing support to tackle violence against women and girls, both BIDs joined forces to host a women-led, empowering women’s personal safety class at The Holy Sepulchre Church over a mid-week lunchtime. The session was hands on, and attendees were taught on valuable self-defence techniques and how to stop an attacker during ‘fight or flight’.
“Thank you very much for organising the safety class today. It was great! We all learnt a lot.”
“Just a quick written word of thanks for organising this event yesterday! Really good to understand self-defence techniques first hand.”
The week continued with community at the heart of delivery, whilst Culture Mile BID offered ‘Coffee with a Cop’, in collaboration with City of London Police. Inviting members of the business community to drop-in to an informal meeting with their local police officers over a free cup of coffee, tips were shared on how to avoid phone snatching and reminders were given to keep bags safe when out socialising at night.
Finally, we wrapped up with a fun, interactive cyber security escape room, held online over MS Teams. Players were divided into teams and tasked with racing against time to save corrupted files, completing cyber focused mini challenges, whilst going head-to-head against the hacker trying to obtain them.
“Great session that really got my brain working. I have attended many cyber security sessions, but this one really put my learning to the test”.
During the week of action, over 50 people were upskilled, supported and engaged in community safety workshops across our neighbouring districts. A great collaborative effort, working in partnership with City of London Police and our key stakeholders to make our shared areas of the City feel safer to work and socialise in.
