Urban Angels: Welcome to our blog

First and foremost, welcome to the start of what will hopefully be a successful, informative, enlightening, eye opening, diverse and community driven blog. I can’t believe how far we’ve come since starting Urban Angels back in March 2021, which feels like yesterday, but also so long ago considering all we have achieved.

It was a late and dark September night. I lay in bed, my mind racing as it usually does, a flurry of ideas running around my head. I began to reflect back on my time at university, having just graduated in the midst of COVID, I was clinging on to memories from before the pandemic hit. The fun nights out, the house parties with friends, the bar crawls and the late night adventures. Amongst this, I also thought about the dark walks home, how I used to jog home from the club, the prolonged phone calls with my friends and boyfriend until I made it to the front door and the honorary hoodie I took with me to hide my gender. The more I began to ponder it, the more shocking it became in my mind. Where was my freedom? Why was I a prisoner to the night, restricted, forced to change my behaviour and walk in fear? How had this become such a norm, almost a natural behaviour for me? Something needed to change.

I started to reflect on all the different ways I could tackle the issue. Ultimately, to this day I believe that the only true way for society to change is to radically shift the culture of young boys. The toxic masculine culture that permeates society is ingrained from such a young age, it becomes almost impossible to break the subconscious behaviours that have been laid down in primary school boys. I recognised that the true need was to go into schools and start shifting culture, radically. However, whilst this was a challenge I was keen to tackle, I knew it would take a generation or two for the effects to truly show. So what could I do in the meantime to help keep women safer?

I thought about my experiences walking home and how in third year, I’d began to walk

home with other women who were also walking alone. It made sense to come together to reduce our vulnerability. Bingo! Why don’t I try and foster a culture of collective walking for women I thought to myself? I wanted to create a Bumble style app, where women could arrange to walk with other women. This would also include a community space for women to foster a community, alongside a map feature where women could plot live alerts. For a good few months, I was determined to get the app off the ground and to this day it would be the ultimate dream. However, after speaking to a number of app developers, the reality was that it was going to cost A LOT. A couple 100 million more than I had in the bank. Sigh…

I won’t lie, I put my mission on the back burner for a while, whilst I contemplated how I could make it work. Then a newsflash popped up on my phone. A woman goes missing, last seen in Clapham Common. Sarah Everard (rest in peace). My chest felt heavy and I felt a lump in my throat. The next couple of days I was obsessively checking the news, desperately hoping to see that they’d found her. Flooding my Instagram with updates. Then the fateful day came when her murder was reported. That day felt like a massive blurr. I felt sad, angry, scared, sick, confused, empty. I cried into my partner's arms. I had never felt so connected to someone who I didn’t know. The fear she must have felt, the helplessness. At that moment a flick switched. No more excuses, no more wasting time, no more feeling unsure or scared of failure. It was time to make a change and nothing else mattered.

A few days later, I opened my laptop up before work. I went onto Canva and created a logo. I logged onto Facebook, created a group and hit share. I found as many groups as I could and spread the word as far as my network would let me. The response was amazing, but also saddening, as it highlighted how sorely this type of community was needed. The group continued to grow from strength to strength and I continued to muddle on, with, to be honest with you, not much of a clue how to run an organisation. Then the beauty of human connection came into play. Women from across the country began to get into contact and the seed became a forest. Soon, I was onboarding women from Birmingham, Cardiff, Portsmouth, Brighton, Essex, Glasgow, Leeds and many more, all who shared the passion and drive that this mission requires.

Today, we have 13 communities operating and we are continuing to expand each week, as well as an Instagram and website. Our next big target is setting up communities across London. We have had news coverage on radios, local newspapers and even the BBC. We are helping to pilot a walking together scheme, launching a jewelry line to raise money for charity, producing educational content and fostering a safe and informative space for over 6,000 women. I couldn’t feel prouder of my Urban Angel family. I can’t wait to see where our journey takes us and we can’t wait to have you all on board.

With optimism,

Talisker [Founder and Head Angel of Exeter]