Festive Better Together Events

Several times each year we get together with our staff, people supported and volunteers at a celebration event that we call ‘Better Together’.

We usually hold one big event in each region that we work, however for our first set of events since Covid-19 we decided to meet in smaller community groups so that we could ensure social distancing measures were followed, and everyone attending would be safe. 

We have absolutely LOVED being able to meet up again and celebrate the fantastic achievements of everyone connected with mirus, and although things aren’t quite back to normal yet (in fact, a few of our later dates had to be hosted online inline with new Government guidance), we’re hopeful that it’s the start of us spending more time together again.

If you couldn’t attend your regional event, here’s a short run down of what happened at them:

Our values

As you can all hopefully remember, back when we could meet up without social distancing measures we asked every individual connected with mirus; our staff teams and volunteers, the people we support, and their families what they thought our new mirus values should be. We got a working group together, and put the ideas into groups of similar themes, and worked really hard to narrow those themes down to five words that became our values.

The work didn’t stop there. Using the information you gave us, we created a list of behaviours that sit under each value. We put these behaviours in a booklet that you can view here, and those behaviours will help us recognise when people are being true to our values, and when they aren’t.

Our new values and their behaviours are going to touch all parts of mirus – from our recruitment and appraisals, to our local celebrations and mirus stars awards!

Refresh your memory of our values journey by watching the video below:

mirus stars

We’re hopeful that this year we can hold a mirus stars awards event. At this event we celebrate the fantastic achievements of our staff, volunteers and people supported.

Now that we have new values, this year’s award categories will be slightly different. This year we are going to ask you to nominate people based on how well they have brought people together, and how respectful, responsible, courageous or empowering they have been. Your nomination will first go to a panel of local judges, who will decide on the winners for each region and they will be celebrated at a regional Better Together event. The winners from each region will then go head-to-head with each other, and an overall winner for each category will go on to win a mirus star!

We’ll have more information about how you can nominate soon!

Watch the video below from our mirus stars awards ceremony in 2019.

Games

So that we could make sure that everyone remained socially distanced, we organised some great table top games for everyone to play.

At the events we played lots of festive bingo, and the winners received some yummy chocolatey prizes!

Each table had a bare mini Christmas tree, and a pile of lights and decorations. We then had a Christmas tree decorating competition, and each table competed against each other to win a prize.

We also had quick fire quiz rounds, wind-up toy races and some awesome Christmas themed hats and headbands to dress in and take home. On top of all of the festive fun, we had delicious buffet food that we ate whilst chatting over a background of Christmas music.

Thank you to everyone who attended, organised and presented at our festive Better Together events, we look forward to more meet ups in future.