Can We Be Friends? How one Instagram account spawned a movement for grown-ups to make more mates. By Rosie Percy

“I’m sure you get this all the time, but can we grab a coffee?” My DMs lit up with another request from someone who’d also recently moved to Folkestone and didn’t know anyone. And they were right: I did get it all the time.

I moved to Folkestone two years ago and used my Instagram account @coolasfolke to share more about where to go, what’s on and how I had settled into a new life here. It got a lot of attention because I wasn’t the only one making the jump: lots of people were heading to Folkestone, leaving their community behind. So lots of us were starting again in the same place at the same time and were all asking the same thing: how the hell do you make new friends as an adult?

Initially I replied to my busy inbox recommending the Beer Shop’s Wednesday activity nights and the pre-show meet-ups before Riot Gull events (a series of female-fronted punk gigs). I even met up with a few people myself, for coffee, dog walks or a drink. But as the messages multiplied, I couldn’t keep up and there were only so many coffee walks I could commit to.

““... how the hell do you make new friends as an adult?””

— Rosie Percy

So I floated an idea via an Instagram Story poll: would people be into the idea of an event where the sole goal was to make new mates? The response rate was 100% yes and so Soft Play was born.

It was named after the padded playground where parents take their kids to socialise. After all, making friends when we were young was as easy as sharing a Lunchable and inviting someone to your birthday party - so I wanted this event to embody that childlike joy and simplicity. Making friends shouldn’t be harder, or less fun, just because we had to grow up, and embracing playfulness was what was needed to make people engage with each other, rather than a pub social that would end in small cliques chatting in corners.

The right venue was important, to encourage openness and leave stuffiness at the door. I found 20th Century Speedway - a former warehouse converted into a circus-themed space where an old ghost-train carriage now serves as a seat for four people, a waltzer has been reupholstered in leopard faux fur and the carnival decor made you feel like a kid again. I booked it for the first Soft Play for 30th June, thinking that if no one bought tickets I could quietly cancel it. But 22 hours later, tickets sold out and I had an inbox full of people asking if there was a waitlist.

The key to making Soft Play work - to actually meet new friends - was asking people to not sit with people they knew. With comfort zones challenged, and to be mindful of social anxiety and the stiffness of organised fun, I based the night around a pub quiz. Teaming up and bonding over rounds about friendship, nostalgia and Folkestone made it easier to chat easily with without wading through too much small talk. Each round was split up with games and challenges, like giving teams 10 minutes and a block of plasticine to create a diorama of what happiness looks like to them. You’d be surprised what bonds are formed over a high-stakes game of pass-the-parcel.

The set-up meant that it didn’t take long for walls to drop and people to genuinely connect. I cut vintage postcards in half and challenged everyone to find the person with their other piece. A round of “two truths and a lie” led to confessions that you’d usually only hear at the end of a heavy night. Forfeits included shots of Fireball, catwalks and a headstand that almost threatened the health and safety policy. At one point the co-owners of Speedway – Mark and Debbie – took me outside to hear the conversation and laughter as it spilled on to the street outside. It had never been that loud before.

Before the night was over, people had shared their stories of moving here, swapped numbers and learned names. It felt authentic: like you’d just happened to bump into someone you were always meant to meet but maybe wouldn’t have had the chance to. It didn’t feel strange to ask for someone’s Instagram handle, or if they were free next week, because we were all there for the same purpose. Afterwards I was tagged in Instagram posts of teammates meeting up again to grab pizza and planning rounds of adventure golf. WhatsApp groups were formed and we were all suddenly bumping into more people that we knew at the pub. Soft Play had served its purpose - we hadn’t just met new people, we’d made genuine mates.

Soon I had messages asking if I’d host Soft Play again, so I went back to Speedway, increased the capacity and put tickets on sale for round two - this time they went in just 16 hours. That’s in September, there’s another waitlist and I’m already thinking ahead to the end of the year and whether there’s potential to expand to places other than Folkestone. It’s much bigger than I thought it would be - initially I envisaged a few of us playing Connect 4 over a few beers as a one-off - but it seems the need to connect with people without our walls up, in a place that embraces and encourages us to be our authentic selves, is more than I anticipated. It turns out we all just want to get along and I’m happy to help us get there.