In 2014 we organised our first language exchange in Leeds. It was attended by 6 people, we spoke English, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish, and nearly all of us are still in touch with each other!
In 2016, with the Leeds Language Exchange now a regular and well attended weekly event, a few people in Leeds including our founder, Harry, met to discuss ways to help during to the Syrian Refugee Crisis. The result was the Leeds Conversation Club, a weekly safe space for refugees and asylum seekers to practise their English in a relaxed environment. To support this new endeavour we asked attendees of the Leeds Language Exchange to pay £1, which would go towards bus tickets so local asylum seekers could attend the conversation club – an agreement which continues to this day. We also began working with the Real Junk Food Project – hosting some events in their original cafe, and helping fight food waste.
In 2018 after the success of the language exchange in Leeds, we opened our first event in a new city – Manchester. This has gone on to be our biggest event with some weeks over 100 language learners attending.
We have steadily been growing into new cities in the UK each year (with the exception of 2020/21 during the Covid restrictions where all our Meetups took place online), and while our focus remains on providing welcoming events to language learners in the UK, we now also offer online language courses, language learning materials and language holidays as well.