Ever wondered where our name comes from? Well credit to the wonder that is Walt Whitman, he uses the word camerado in his poem “Song for the Open Road”, Walt wrote that on the open road of life more important than food or money is to have a “camerado” beside you to share the journey.  So this led to Camerados, having someone halfway between a stranger and a friend alongside you, without judgement, who just looks out for you and vice versa.

The gentle tea drinkers revolution starts in Maff’s bedroom, inspired by Srđa Popović
“Camerados” gets used in emails and sticks
Camerados becomes the name.

The first Public Living Room opens in Sheffield bringing life to an undertakers. Public Living Rooms have gone on to be created in more than 80 places across the globe, from a library in Bristol to a market place in Oswestry, a community centre in Baltimore to a cafe in Australia and a school in Norwich to a University in Strathclyde. The Public Living Rooms are all run by the movement for the movement and are there to provide a space for folk to go in tough and good times, to meet others and just be alongside them, in a very human friendly way.

Maff heads to the USA to seek out fellow camerados, he finds a few and they end up joining the movement, eventually setting up their own Public Living Rooms.

The USA gets it’s first Public Living Room in Greenmount West Community Centre in Baltimore, opened and run by Kisha and her fellow camerados in this amazing community.

The first Public Living Room in a prison opens in UK at HMP Kirkham with another to follow in 2019 in HMP Dovegate.

Neighbourhood Kitchen events launch, the movement coming together over food, creating, cooking and then eating it together, one of the fantastic ways to mix with people who don’t look like you!

The amazing movement members at Bristol Student Union open the first university based Public Living Room in the student union building on an entire floor! They even designed and introduced their own interpretation of the principles as well as creating artwork across the walls. The student union living room is used by 700 people a day, students have found it a welcoming place to go and sit, so much so that Bristol University has gone on to create 4 more Public Living Rooms in their halls of residence.

Since the opening of the Bristol University Public Living Room, the universities of Strathclyde, Derby and East Anglia have also set up theirs, more have also been opened at Further Education colleges in Dover, Sheffield, York and Leeds.

The creation of Human hospitals starts with a Public Living Room based in a teepee in Blackpool Hospital, more than 15,000 people used it during the 3 months it was there, it was open to patients, visitors and staff. Human Hospital Public Living Rooms went on to be created in 5 other NHS hospitals across the UK in James Cook University Hospital Middlesbrough, Rotherham General Hospital, Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care Hospital, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and Craigavon Area Hospital.

A Public Living Room was taken to the Wilderness Festival to provide a space for folk to look out for others during the festival and show the impact of what it is to be more human. The following year the Public Living Room returned in the shape of a dome with a mobile Public Living Room touring the festival site too.

The movement got together for it’s first ever campfire on a chilly Oxfordshire weekend in November, bringing together those who had started Public Living Rooms or were interested in finding out more about the movement. The weekends have continued and moved around to different locations to allow as many folk to attend as possible, now notorious for their hot apple drink, pub quiz and chilled welcoming vibe.

Growing Public Living Rooms by creating resources for the movement to take the lead and make the spaces themselves, so 12 communities all around the world received our prototype Public Living Room in a Box, they went to make public living rooms appear in places from beach huts to community centres.

The movement took to the streets to raise awareness that Christmas can be a really tough time for some folk, by decorating bus stops all over the world showing that it’s important to look out for each other all year round and not just at Christmas.

The Camerados Chronicle newspaper first edition is published, created and designed entirely by members of the movement and sent to all the Public Living Rooms.

The start of a new way of Governance, set up to protect and oversee the mission, our Camerados Council is made up of members of the movement who act as a critical friend to the Association of Camerados. The Council Members rotate usually after a year to enable other movement members to take part, anyone in the movement can be part of the Council and new folk are recruited annually each Autumn.

The Public Living Room boxes are proving to be so popular that a new design was created so that more could be sent out to the movement, by the beginning of 2020 more than 70 new style boxes had been delivered to communities around the world.

The Meaning Conference invited our Founder, Maff Potts, to speak at their conference so a Public Living Room made it’s way to Brighton Dome for the conference attendees.  You can watch and listen to Maff talk all about the meaning of life, so grab a brew and draw up a cosy chair.

Listen out for a camerados podcast, Maff toured with a fluffy microphone and a gizmo to collect tales from Public Living Rooms and meet the folk who set them up and those that attend.

Camerados launched it’s online shop with all our merchandise in December, with lots of types of t-shirts, tote bags and badges. A way to help raise money for the movement and help to spread our message.

The Covid-19 pandemic meant that getting together in a Public Living Room was no longer possible, so a great camerado in Germany, helped come up with the idea of online Public Living Rooms, we called them SpoonRooms, why? Well they are a video call that can sometimes become a cacophony of sound unless you take your turn, so spoons are our version of raising your hand. SpoonRooms are now held twice a week hosted by the AoC on a Wednesday evening and Saturday morning, other folk in the movement also hold their own local SpoonRooms.

Connecting with others during the pandemic included creating a bit of the spirit of camerados in the shape of BitOfCompany, an online broadcast twice a week presented by our Founder, MaffPotts during the first UK lockdown. You can watch all of the episodes on our YouTube channel.

Here is the last episode if you fancy watching.

Lots of schools are part of the Camerados movement. So the AoC wondered what it would be like to have Camerados in more schools along with resources to help understand what it means to be a camerado to others. Our pilot in primary schools was launched in September 2020 with 7 schools taking part.

BitOfCompanyLive was the first live online gathering of folks from around the movement, our virtual version of a campfire, which couldn’t happen due to the pandemic. The guest speaker to end all guest speakers Srdja Popovic, made an appearance to inspire the movement and get everyone thinking about ways to form human connections through laughtervism.

OpenHouse is the way the movement can get together and meet the folk that work at the AoC and the Camerados Council, they are held usually once a quarter and give an opportunity for anyone to ask questions about anything related to the movement.

HouseParty started to bring parties to our houses during the pandemic and give folk the chance to dance with others from their own living rooms.

Folk in the movement have been coming together over a brew on zoom to natter whilst knitting, building lego, discussing films and books.

Set up for those folk who’ve got a query about Public Living Rooms, the principles or anything  else related to the movement, held every Friday at Midday.

When Life is Pants what gets you through?……… dancing around in giant pants with other Camerados and finding out about looking out for each other, from Norwich to Manchester folk have been finding out how the camerados movement can get you through tough times.

Maff is having conversations with folk around the UK about all the mistakes and hilarious things that happened when creating Camerados’ public living rooms in places from Baltimore to Blackpool.

Fancy spreading the message of Camerados with a little humour an activism? Then come along to our regular activism group meeting on the first Monday of every month, contact office@camerados.org for how to get involved.

Christmas can be a difficult time of year for many reasons, so folk from the movement set up a host of OverABrew events for folk to join in during the festive period, you could knit, build, chat, dance and create poetry all online in the company of others.

Discovering more about the movement in an post pandemic era began in January, finding out how it can grow and be nurtured through learning exchanges, story collection, conversations, visits and creating a space on the website to allow the movement to tell us what they think.

SpoonRooms got folk together online during the pandemic and the movement is still getting together online with OverABrew.  OverABrew is the online public living room space and sometimes these have an activity too. You can find out more here.

The pupils at Coleridge School (who were part of our primary school pilot) created a series of fantastic logos for their school playground, spreading the message of look out for each other in Rotherham.

Celebrating the end of the Year of Childhood in Scotland, at Portobello Beach where the children of a local primary school created a public living room as part of their work on Children’s rights.

A hot spell prompted folk around the UK to set up public living rooms outside in; Saffron Walden, Boscombe, Frome, Trowbridge, Hebden Bridge, Norwich, Doncaster, Winchester, Stoke-on-Trent, Chorley…… and many more!

Cardiff University Hospital opened a public living room for their staff, the first one in a hospital to open since the start of the covid-19 pandemic.

Public living rooms popped up on the pavements of Blackpool, Preston, Wrexham and Castle Donnington during August.

September saw the movement hitting the milestone of 100 public living rooms, a mixture of permanent and pop up spaces and hopefully many more by the end of the year.

Following a trial of Ripple Effect Mapping of Public Living Rooms in 2022, the movement will be carrying out more of these, alongside the collection of stories form folk who attend, during 2023 and 2024, watch our social media for dates between June and March. Ripple Effect Mapping is a great way to capture the intended and unintended impacts of an activity, and they can be done in a really fun way inside a Public Living Room. Results from 2023 will be published in Spring 2024.

In April 2023, the Learning report from 2022 was published. Based upon stories from the movement and impact observations using Ripple Effect Mapping. Folk in the movement told us the impact on them, their communities and society as a whole;

A new video about the movement was made in March 2023, it compliments the book also published around the same time. It’s been shared far and wide, you can watch it here and then share it with others!

In March 2023, the movement wrote a new book all about Camerados and Public Living Rooms. Lots of movement members contributed to it’s creation with photos, interviews and quotes. The book was sent to every public living room and will also go in every new box kit sent out.

Pavement public living rooms will continue to pop around the country during 2023, they started with;

Birmingham, Hastings, Brighton and Nottingham in February and Leicester, Hartlepool, Hull, Scarborough, Cardiff and Newport in March.

Other places to be visited during the year will be Reading, Dudley, Sandwell, Burnley, Blackburn, Belfast, Sheffield, Bristol, Doncaster….. and many more!

Do you know someone who does brilliant stuff in their community and deserves to be recognised for it? Well then let us know and we’ll send them a F***ing Brilliant Box. They can’t already be in the movement and they need to align with our principles, you can nominate someone at cuppa@camerados.org

There are 200 public living rooms around the world! thank you to everyone who has created one in their community. The 200th was in Lisburn in Northern Ireland, run by the Resurgam Trust at their healthy living centre.

Keep a look out for our new Zine’s that will be appearing quarterly in a public living room near you. You can also find plain text versions on this website under latest news. The Zines have lots of news about the movement, puts a spotlight on public living rooms and maybe the odd bit of silliness.

Have you ever thought what you could use to drink a cup of tea with? Well why not head over to the Camerados Shop and see what useful objects you can buy.

When is a survey not really a survey? Well never….. as it will always be about the questions, we hope though that our survey with it’s prize of a Tea Cosy to the first 50 names out of a tea pot after closing, will mean folk are happy to complete it. The results will be used to help learn about the movement, best ways to support it and help with future funding applications.

It may be winter but the pop up pavement public living room is back for the first time in 2024! Hitting the streets of south Wales to chat to folk in Cardiff, Barry, Port Talbot and Swansea.

The Association of Camerados joined in with a four-day event, which was organised to celebrate collaboration and imagination in the face of the many great challenges of our time. Looking at the big question – how can we face up to the challenges of the twenty-first century and how do we make the world safer, fairer and better for those we love and the place we call home? The Fete of Britain was created by Hard Art, a movement of artists, musicians and others in creative positions wishing to make a positive change.

National Theatre Wales took a public living room on tour with them as part of their brilliant musical production Feral Monsters. Each theatre in the tour hosted a public living room no agenda space and then the resources were taken on my local community groups to carry them on afterwards.

The Mysteries a local acoustic band to the Folk in the Shed, offered to raise funds for the movement by creating a fundraising gig…… it was a sell out and their very groovy tunes were a huge hit.

Dr Martha Newson and Dr Sofia Stathi from the University of Greenwich, very kindly helped to host the first of three roundtables of Academics from across a variety of disciplines to discuss the principles behind the Camerados Movement and the concept of Public Living Rooms.

Folk across the movement have been taking part in Dunk Offs in their Public Living Rooms, the Folk in the Shed took to the streets of Westminster in London, in the run up to the general election to highlight that we can still get on even if our politics differ.

The 250th Public Living Room opened at the The Bevy in Brighton. The Bevy is a community owned pub in the Moulescoomb area of Brighton, and after some fundraising to stay open they have relaunched with a Public Living Room as part of the space!

Sam, a Camerado from Norwich, headed to North America to meet with folk he knew through community work, to tell them about Camerados and create pop up Public Living Rooms in communities to show them how easy it is to do. Sam ventured to Burlington and Chelsea in Canada, as well as Kenosha, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Chicago.

September saw us have a virtual campfire online with folk joining us from across the globe, making biscuit towers, guessing who was wearing giant pants and sharing stories and singing songs.

The Folk in the Shed, created a Public Living Room at the SideBar event as part of the Summit of the Future held by the UN in New York. SideBar create spaces away from the formal discussions to allow folk attending to have ‘side’ conversations and connect with others at the summit.

Brunshaw Primary School in Burnley and Down Town Burnley Public Living Room are working together to spread the word of Camerados amongst the wider school community.

After 6 very happy years in our shed the team at Association of Camerados is on the move to……a slightly bigger shed, alright it’s a barn. Thanks to everyone who helped us move, it was a bit tiring!

Whoop, the Movement has held it’s first Campfire since the covid-19 pandemic (when the last in person campfire was cancelled) of folk from 50 Public Living Rooms as far away as Virginia USA, to those from the corners of the UK. There were chances to meet others in the Movement, go to sessions on art activism and ripple effect mapping, and general shenanigans in the form of games, dancing and or course a campfire itself.

Maff Potts has written a book, entitled ‘Friends and Purpose’ it was launched on the 6th February 2025 and is now available to buy from the following places:

The Wallingford Bookshop

or if you are non UK then Amazon

The Oxford Sidebar event ran alongside the 2025 Skoll World Forum in Oxford for attendees of Skoll to meet and foster connections. Association of Camerados was invited by The Sidebar to create a Public Living Room for this connection to take place.

The Camerados movement turns 10 in 2025 and there is going to be lots of events happening during the year to celebrate this event, from monthly challenges to a Public Living Room week at the end of June.

Can your Public Living Room give £10 a month for 10 months! 

As the Camerados movement reaches 10 years old we have a funding challenge to continue our work, we’d love to keep our public living rooms free from agenda and help communities grow them at a time when they’ve never been more needed. So if you feel able to we’d love you to give others a chance to create these spaces.

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