{"id":705764,"date":"2026-07-22T19:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T19:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/705764\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T19:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T19:32:08","slug":"chatty-bench-to-reduce-loneliness-installed-in-sheffield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/705764\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Chatty bench&#8221; to reduce loneliness installed in Sheffield"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A charity that tackles social isolation among older people has unveiled a new bench to encourage conversations between strangers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The bench, which is bright pink, was designed by charity b:friend and installed in Orchard Square in Sheffield city centre earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The charity&#8217;s CEO Colette Bunker, who came to test the bench herself, said: &#8220;As soon as I sat down, somebody came and spoke to me and I thought, &#8216;oh my God, it&#8217;s working!&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Loneliness is a condition that we all feel from time to time, and a lot more than we probably like to admit.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A charity that tackles social isolation among older people has unveiled a new bench to encourage conversations between&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":705765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-705764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}