Shared Words Community Support & Education
Our purpose

A first step that feels small

Walk and Talk is a welcoming, outdoor, conversation-led project. It turns ordinary walking, practical prompts and friendly conversation into a first step towards confidence, friendship and local belonging.

It exists for people who may be unable, unlikely or not yet confident enough to access formal ESOL provision. Rather than asking women to come to a classroom, we meet them where a conversation can happen naturally — on a path, in a park, on a Wednesday afternoon.

Participants are not passive beneficiaries. Feedback and responses shape the sessions and the materials, so the programme grows around real needs rather than a fixed syllabus.

The Shared Words Walk and Talk logo: two women walking and talking along a winding park path between trees.

Walk and Talk
English practice, fresh air, friendly faces.

Digital story

A Pillow

A short digital story about arriving somewhere new and needing one very ordinary thing — and what it takes to ask for it.

Opening frame of the digital story A Pillow: a plain white pillow on a made bed in soft daylight.
Subtitles included Watch on YouTube Shared with participant consent Produced with Teesside University

Voice

Digital stories give participants a way to speak for themselves, in their own words and on their own terms.

Evidence

With consent, the stories help us show funders and partners what an informal first step actually changes.

Reach

They extend the project beyond the park, so other places can borrow the model and adapt it.

Purpose, mission and vision

What we are working towards

Purpose

To make English practice feel safe, useful and socially connected for women facing structural barriers to formal learning.

Mission

To create weekly guided walks in Albert Park where participants, children and trained volunteers build confidence through real conversation, shared prompts and practical local knowledge.

Vision

A Middlesbrough where migrant and refugee women have the language confidence, social links and agency to participate more fully in community life.

Our values

Five things we hold to

Warmth

Every touchpoint should feel safe, human and unthreatening.

Dignity

Participants are not passive beneficiaries; they shape the sessions and materials through their feedback.

Practicality

The language practised should help with real life: shops, weather, family needs, appointments, directions and asking for support.

Belonging

The project should reduce isolation by creating repeated, low-pressure moments of social contact.

Co-creation

Materials and prompts are refined from lived experience, not imposed as a fixed syllabus.

And one promise

You can practise English in a friendly, practical and supportive way, without needing to enter a formal classroom first.

The words we choose

How we talk about this work

Language shapes how people see themselves in a project. We avoid deficit-based and charity-pity framing in everything participants read.

We say

  • women who speak English as an additional language
  • participants
  • practise English
  • confidence, friendship, belonging
  • friendly guided walks
  • children welcome

We avoid

  • non-English speakers
  • service users, clients
  • fix language problems
  • dependency, vulnerability as the lead message
  • intervention, treatment, remedial provision
  • childcare problem
Research and partnership

Grounded in practice and evidence

Walk and Talk was developed with Suzanne Evans, Senior Lecturer in English Language in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Law at Teesside University, Middlesbrough. Her research and teaching focus on the English language, sociolinguistics and discourse.

The pilot is being evaluated as it runs. Participant feedback shapes the sessions week by week, and the resulting data supports an ESOL framework, approach and set of materials that other informal settings can adopt.

Walk and Talk translates TESOL research into an accessible community model that supports language confidence, social integration, wellbeing and participant-led evaluation.

Suzanne Evans at Teesside University →

Students seated in a university lecture theatre listening to a lecturer.
Developed in partnership with Teesside University
Belonging begins with a conversation. Shared Words
See how a session works