"Third spaces" are informal gathering places where people in a particular community or neighbourhood meet to develop friendships, discuss issues, and interact/network with others. They have always been an important way in which the community has developed and retained cohesion and a sense of identity."Third places" are crucial to a community for a number of reasons:
- They are distinctive informal gathering places.
- They make people feel at home.
- They foster relationships and a diversity of human contact.
- They help create a sense of place and community.
- They invoke a sense of civic pride.
- They provide numerous opportunities for serendipity.
- They promote friendship.
- They allow people to relax and unwind after a long day at work.
- They are socially binding.
- They encourage sociability instead of isolation.
- They make life more colourful.
There are essential ingredients to a well-functioning "third place". They must be free or inexpensive to enter and purchase food and drink within. They should be a place where a number of people regularly go on a daily basis. It should be a place where the person feels welcome and comfortable, and where it is easy to enter into conversation. And a person who goes there should be able to expect to find both old and new friends each time she or he goes.....and that's where New Hope enters the scene. We have the opportunity to be and provide that 3rd space in this community. God is calling us to be a community (an incarnational presence) filled with grace, love and forgiveness, accesible and safe for the people of east Hamilton that He so desparately loves. With a physical place to call home, we know God is calling us to be that presence, that open, useable, welcoming presence each and every day of the week.
(the beginning description of 3rd spaces is found on the Freeway Cafe's website - check it out for further description)
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