Pippa Moyle, founder of the City Girl Network, created Brighton Girl back in 2016 as a coffee meet up to help women in the city meet one another.
Now the Brighton Girl Facebook group has more than 36,000 members and the group organises dozens of in person meet ups and groups.
Its success has been replicated up and down the country, with 27 City Girl groups in cities like London, Manchester, Bristol and Oxford as well as expanding out of cities with groups in Devon, Buckinghamshire and rural Sussex.
The network has just short of 250,000 members nationwide.
Pippa, who runs the network full time, manages 160 volunteers up and down the country.
The 33-year-old moved to Brighton at 18 to study songwriting at BIMM, where contemporaries included Tom Odell and James Bay. With the dream of being a music journalist in mind, Pippa moved to Sheffield to study journalism but “spent my whole time wishing I was in Brighton”.
At university, she launched a women’s magazine and began to develop a “real interest” in women’s issues, lifestyle and culture.
After a brief period in London as a publicist, Pippa moved back to Brighton in 2015 and started working in marketing as well as running a lifestyle blog in her spare time.
But after years of longing to be back in the city, her return felt a little lonelier than expected.
“I thought, ‘I’ve done it, I’ve made it’ but when I moved here, a lot of my friends from my time at BIMM had moved to London, so that life I thought I was going back to had disappeared,” she said.
“I was walking on the beach one day feeling a bit disconnected. Yes, I had a job, I was living in Brighton and I was dating someone. I felt close to something, but not quite there yet.
“I saw a girl looking out to sea and wondered whether she felt the same.”
Spurred on by this moment, Pippa decided to create what was initially a magazine called Brighton Girl. Six months later, she held her first Brighton Girl coffee meet up on March 13, 2016.
“Seventeen girls turned up and I felt so excited,” she said. “I had this feeling that my life had completely changed before my eyes. It’s a bit of a ‘the rest is history’ situation.”
Not only did the Brighton Girl group blossom, with dozens of drinks nights, yoga and Pilates sessions, book and craft clubs and more but the success began to be replicated elsewhere.
Often, as women moved from Brighton to other cities around the country, they would set up new groups.
Each city has a community manager who has their own team of volunteers who manage the Facebook group and organise events. All of the 27 City Girl networks are ultimately overseen by Pippa.
The network’s main revenue source is from advertising for local businesses.
“I really believe in the power of the local economy,” she said.
“There are a lot of people who were going to leave the city and Brighton girl has kept them here.
“When you think how much money is lost because people feel they don’t belong, from jobs losing staff they have invested in training, to shops losing customers. It’s amazing that people can find their belonging and can stay in the city.”
One of the big successes of the network has been the Facebook groups, which have become hubs for advice, recommendations and friendships. The network has a predominantly late Gen Z/Millennial audience.
Pages are filled with people, anonymous or otherwise, seeking tips and advice on everything from relationship dilemmas and housemate dramas to recommendations for removal companies or tradespeople.
Pippa and her volunteers work hard to keep the pages focussed on friendship and recommendations and to retain them as positive spaces.
“On one side the network is about finding friends – which can be really hard to do when you move somewhere – but it’s also about the hidden gems. Where are the best club nights, how can I find poetry nights, where can I find a hairdresser who works this specific kind of hair or the best beach bars.
“I’m proud that people feel that it is a space where they can ask. There is a lot that doesn’t go through – sometimes we refer people to charities and other services.
“If we feel it’s not a safe and proper space for someone in a very vulnerable state, then we will handhold them to the right service. During the pandemic, we even housed people on Brighton Girl verified sofas.”
For Pippa, who recently moved back to Brighton from Haywards Heath, it has been rewarding to see the friendships which have blossomed from the network.
“It has been amazing to see people grow up with us,” Pippa said. “I’ve been to so many baby showers and weddings of people from the network.
“There are people who have found their best friends, travel partners and flatmates – there are so many Brighton Girl houses over the city.
“You might not find your best friend but, especially for those who work from home, people can feel lonely and it’s important to look after our social health.”
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