Bristol Nightline announced last month that the service will shut down its phone line and instant messaging services on Monday, 30th June 2025. What’s next?
By Alfie Coan, Contributor
You may have come across Bristol Nightline or seen their posters around the city presenting the tagline ‘We’ll listen, not lecture.’
Part of a network of twenty-five university Nightlines, the Bristol Nightline is an anonymous and confidential listening service run by resilient student volunteers for other students. Their phone lines were open from 8pm to 8am during term time, offering nighttime aid to students, accessible through a quick phone call or text. Over more than forty years, thousands of Bristol Nightline volunteers have provided invaluable support to the students at the University of Bristol, providing counselling, therapy, and a safe environment for students to talk about their anxieties.
However, due to the announcement by the Nightline Association (NLA) earlier this year that it will be closing on Monday, 30th June 2025, the Bristol Nightline is officially ending its operations, although other Nightlines across the country will continue to run.
According to the NLA website, the decision to close down was made due to challenges that are common across the charity sector, namely a difficult funding landscape and decreasing volunteer numbers, amongst other prevalent issues.
CEO of NLA Katie Endacott has stated on their website: ‘We are so proud of how far the Nightline movement has come, and we will be working with each of our Nightlines, their institutions and Students’ Unions over the next 4 months to ensure they can continue to support students when other services aren’t available.’
This isn’t the end of Bristol Nightline, though, as they assured students in their recent Facebook post. They have said that they will continue to support students on campus, albeit not via a phone line or instant messaging service as they have in the past, and the Nightline student society will continue to operate to deliver this support in the form of society training for new volunteers and peer-to-peer support sessions.
On top of this, the University of Bristol signposted students in a recent newsletter to the volunteer program TalkCampus, an online peer-to-peer mental health support network similar to Nightline. Students are encouraged to sign up as a TalkCampus buddy, the name given to TalkCampus volunteers, where you can receive training in active listening and self-care. After the full training period, volunteers are asked to dedicate 5-6 hours per week to the program.
TalkCampus was launched as a higher education-specific service in 2020 by the international mental health tech company Talk Life in response to the global pandemic. Although younger than Nightline, its program has proven successful, growing to support more than 250 institutions and millions of students worldwide.
While the departure of the Nightline organisation is a heartbreaking one, it undoubtedly leaves a lasting legacy that will continue in the Nightline student society and future student support networks for many years to come.
There remains accessible support for struggling students in the form of TalkCampus and other services, as students wait for the much-anticipated return of the Bristol Nightline student society.
Information on mental health support can be found here: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/students/support/health/mental-health-support/.
