Londoner, 26, starts city-wide social club to bring strangers together and fight urban loneliness

A 26-year-old who found himself feeling isolated and lonely after moving to London has started an initiative to bring people together in the city, tackling the urban loneliness epidemic head on.

Jacob Ward, who is originally from Cheltenham, made his move to London after university and found himself feeling lonely, struggling to make meaningful connections amid the bustle of city life.

“When I moved to London I was expecting to meet so many people and make so many friends and connections,” Jacob told PA Real Life.

“But I found it was the complete opposite. I was really isolated and I struggled to meet like-minded people.”

Reluctant to let that get the better of him, Jacob – who has been making fitness and bodybuilding content online since he was 16 – decided to forge a group for people to make connections and even friends in the city. In May 2025, Better Connections was born.

“I wanted to meet new people and I didn’t feel like there was a group out there for me,” he said.

“I’ve been to lots of different run clubs and I never felt particularly comfortable there because either they were very cliquey and people had their groups and stuck to them, or it was about performance.

“I wanted to start a community that felt accessible and one that people could see content of and realise that it’s actually not as nerve-racking as you think it’s going to be.”

After moving to Birmingham from his rural home town for university, Jacob said it was eye opening to see how many opportunities there were for new hobbies and friendships.

Following his graduation, Jacob and his friend decided to move to London to push themselves out of their comfort zone.

However, he says it was not what he thought it was going to be.

When he first moved to London, Jacob found that when it came to meeting people, he often got the impression that people are not friendly.

“It’s not until you actually go up to someone and approach them that you actually realise that under the hard exterior, nine times out of 10, people are super-friendly here,” he said.

“It just takes taking a moment to talk to someone to understand their story and what they’re going through.”

“That’s when I decided to start creating content around interacting with strangers, meeting new people and actually putting myself out of my comfort zone as someone who struggled with anxiety my whole life,” he said, referring to his content series where he would approach strangers in the street and start chatting to them.

“I thought the only way to solve this is to actually go out there and try to meet new people.

“The idea is to encourage other people to feel confident enough to do the same thing. They might see me talking to stranger and then they think if he can do it, then I can do it.

The first time Jacob approached someone on the street he said he was so nervous.

“I still am,” he added. “People get the impression when they see my content that I’m a super-confident guy, and I’ve always been a really confident guy, and while it has improved over time, I still get really nervous when I go up to new people.

“I get the butterflies in my stomach, but every time I leave a conversation, I learn something new about someone.

“People are always super-friendly, which brings me back to doing it more, and hopefully encouraging other people to do the same thing.”

In May 2025, Jacob created his group Better Connections, which is designed to bring people together through a variety of active group hobbies which revolve around movement and exercise, such as running, cycling, swimming, climbing, boxing and more.

Jacob explained that to help people ease into the environment at his club, he always puts them in pairs initially so they always have someone to talk to.

He added: “We don’t have a specific form of exercise or sport that we do. We do lots of different sports and that way I feel like I cater to everyone.”

Jacob said it is difficult to explain the feeling the impact of having this group has.

“With social media and the running events, you don’t always see the impact that you’re having until you actually have a conversation with someone,” he said.

“For the first three or four months, I didn’t really feel like I was making much of an impact. Videos were doing well online of the group, but at the time, I didn’t really necessarily hear stories of people connecting through it.”

However, Jacob received a message from a girl who had been to one of his events, who told him she had met two other girls and they had spent the whole afternoon in the coffee shop, chatting and getting to know each other.

“It wasn’t until I heard that that I realised that people are establishing connections beyond the events and it means the world to hear that,” Jacob said.

He appreciates how difficult it can be to make that first step towards meeting new people, but he has learned that when it comes to anxiety, the feeling before we do anything is almost always worse than the actual experience itself.

“A lot of mental stress and anxiety is focused on the build up,” he said.

“I think once you go for the first time to anything, you realise it’s not as nerve-racking as you thought it was going to be. For me, the hardest part is always pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and just doing it for the first time.

“Once you’ve broken through that barrier, it applies to anything in life. If I just turn up, I’ve done the hardest part.”

As for his long-term goal with Better Connections, Jacob said he wants to continue growing the community, and to encourage as many people as he can to push themselves out of their comfort zone.

“This isn’t something I make money from. It’s not anything to do with that. I love seeing people connecting.”

Find out more about Better Connections here: https://www.instagram.com/better.connections/