Our assemblies in July-December 2019

Queer Intentions

• 7th July 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: Amelia Abraham
• Poet: Jenny Foulds

Today, the options and freedoms on offer to LGBTQ+ people living in the West are greater than ever before. But is same-sex marriage, improved media visibility and corporate endorsement all it’s cracked up to be? At what cost does this acceptance come? And who is getting left behind, particularly in parts of the world where LGBTQ+ rights aren’t so advanced?

For this Pride special Sunday Assembly we are so excited to have journalist Amelia Abraham coming to speak with us. Amelia will be talking about her latest book Queer Intentions: A (Personal) Journey Through LGBTQ+ Culture, where she travels to 8 countries in the West looking at the unprecedented levels of acceptance and visibility on offer to LGBTQ+ people and looks at some of the potential drawbacks and catches. Here, for Pride month, she explains what she learned along the way, and asks what we really mean when we talk about LGBTQ+ equality.

Amelia Abraham is a journalist from London. She has worked as an editor at Vice, Refinery29 and Dazed. Her main interest is LGBTQ+ identity politics, and she has written on this topic for the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent, the Sunday Times, the New Statesman, ES Magazine, i-D and Vogue.

We also have the wonderful Jenny Foulds coming to perform some spoken word for us!

Then we’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

Rewilding the City Slicker

• 21st July 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: Tony Riddle
• Poet: Anj Cairns

If you come along to Sunday Assembly London, chances are you live in this urban jungle we call home. How connected to you feel to nature in your day to day concrete-life? Do you want to take a journey back to the wilder version of yourself? – Then this assembly is for you! And before you ask, no, we aren’t all going to be hopping on a bus to the forest!

This assembly will be our last for summer (we are back in September) so we wanted to set you up for some outdoor adventures. We are so excited to have Tony Riddle along to speak with us! Tony has spent twenty years studying the modern condition and working on ways to free us from its constraints to achieve total wellness.

“If we can recognise where nature is missing from our lives we can reconnect with it and fall back in love with it, and in doing so can shake the angst-inducing monkey off our collective back” – sounds good, right?

We also have the wonderful Anj Cairns coming to perform some spoken word for us and Katherine Sirrell is Trying Her Best.

Then we’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

Community Picnics

• 4th and 18th August 2019, 11:00am

Now that Sunday Assembly is on its usual summer break from Conway Hall, there’s no need to miss us too much! Join us in the nearby Lincoln’s Inn Fields from 11am this Sunday for a Potluck Picnic (feel free to bring things to share with labels for eating preferences), a Summer Song Singalong, Lawn Games, Board Games, Pavement Poetry and a free Ukulele class (bring your own Uke if you want to join in!). Dogs welcome too! 

What We Throw Away and Where It Goes

• 1st September 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: Daniel Webb

This September 1st we’re returning to Conway Hall fresh off our summer break to discuss one of the biggest trending topics of 2019 – WASTE.

It’s estimated that only 4% of over 295 BILLION pieces of plastic thrown away annually in the UK is actually being recycled. Are we being lied to about recycling? Because clearly, recycling is not enough.

We’re super excited to hear from Daniel Webb, founder of Everyday Plastic, as our main speaker. Daniel was commissioned to make a giant mural of all the plastic he threw away in a year, and then co-authored “Everyday Plastic: what we throw away and where it goes” with scientist Dr Julie Schneider, based on his analysis, which he’ll be talking about on the day.

We’re also kicking-off 4 months of SA London Labs, where we’ll be experimenting with all the elements that make Sunday Assembly, bringing in community ideas and getting collaborative to make our community the best we can be!

As always alongside that we will have some wonderful spoken word from Binky Hyde, mass singalongs to some of our favourite pop songs, hearing stories from a member of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

Living Your Best Life

• 15th September 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: James Wallman
• Poet: Anj Cairns

Ever find yourself scrolling mindlessly through your feed with a niggling feeling you could be doing something more satisfying? Or returned from a holiday wondered whether it had really been worth it?

This coming Sunday, author and speaker James Wallman talks to us about his life-changing rules for creating exciting and enriching experiences, and making the most of our leisure time in the face of an ever-longer list of things to do!

Then we have the wonderful Anj Cairns coming to do some found poetry for us as well as our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite pop songs, hearing stories from a member of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

We’re also continuing SA London Labs, where we’ll be experimenting with all the elements that make Sunday Assembly, bringing in community ideas and getting collaborative to make our community the best we can be!

Our Incredible Ocean

• 6th October 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: Caroline Riggs

The ocean covers 71% of the Earth’s surface and contains some of the most amazing creatures on this planet. We’ll be taking some time on Sunday 6th October to wonder at just how incredible they are.

Caroline Riggs is the granddaughter of a lighthouse keeper, and she innately loves the seas, spending her spare time convincing everyone they should love them too! She works with Incredible Oceans, an organisation telling critical ocean-saving stories through the arts and science.

Our host, Sanderson Jones, will also be introducing amazing spoken word performance, someone from the community telling us how they’re Trying Their Best, and then mass singalongs to some of our favourite pop songs and drinking a vat of tea afterwards!

We’re also continuing SA London Labs, where we’ll be experimenting with all the elements that make Sunday Assembly, bringing in community ideas and getting collaborative to make our community the best we can be!

Small Steps, Big Ideas

• 20th October 2019, 11:00am

• Speakers: Jangala‘s team

We’re thrilled to be bringing you this weekends Sunday Assembly as part of the Bloomsbury Festival. Small Steps, Big Ideas is a celebration of endeavour, progress, and pioneering achievements.

Our speakers this week are from Jangala, a UK-based charity dedicated to enabling internet access for people in need of urgent humanitarian aid or longer-term development assistance.

In situations of natural and manmade disaster, existing communications networks can fail – exactly when the need for them is the greatest. Jangala have developed Big Box, a piece of equipment which enables WiFi – something so essential during humanitarian emergencies, where coordination and communication are vital.

Our host, Sanderson Jones, will also be introducing amazing spoken word performance, someone from the community telling us how they’re Trying Their Best, and then mass singalongs to some of our favourite pop songs and drinking a vat of tea afterwards!

We’re also continuing SA London Labs, where we’ll be experimenting with all the elements that make Sunday Assembly, bringing in community ideas and getting collaborative to make our community the best we can be!

Social Mobility

• 3rd November 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: Rachael Catherine
• Poet: Dennis Evans

The social structure of the UK has historically been highly influenced by the concept of social class, which continues to affects our society today. Statistics tell us that children of highly paid individuals are more likely to end up in highly paid careers and children of low paid individuals are more likely to be low earners. If you’re someone born into a lower socioeconomic bracket, how do you break out of that cycle? – This is social mobility, the subject of our assembly this week.

We are thrilled to have Rachael Catherine speaking with us at this assembly. Rachael is a young Mancunian with council estate roots and passion firmly placed in tackling class inequality. She works for RECLAIM, a youth-leadership and social change charity, working with working class young people with an aim of ending leadership inequality.

Most of her work is centred in the belief that too few social change leaders come from the backgrounds of the problems they seek to address – particularly from personal experience, she wants to promote the idea that lived experience should be valued as expertise.

We will have an amazing spoken word performance from Dennis Evans and someone from the community telling us how they’re Trying Their Best.

Then as usual, mass singalongs to some of our favourite pop songs and drinking a vat of tea afterwards!

We’re also continuing SA London Labs, where we’ll be experimenting with all the elements that make Sunday Assembly, bringing in community ideas and getting collaborative to make our community the best we can be!

Outrageous Statistics

• 17th November 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: Zoe Griffiths

If you’re lucky enough to be a resident of Hackney or Tower Hamlets you’ll by now have completed your practice Census for the Office for National Statistics. Census 2021 is a few years away yet, but it’s got us thinking about numbers and statistics!

In this assembly we are thrilled to have mathematician Zoe Griffiths speaking with us. Zoe will explore the multitude of ways outrageous conclusions can seemingly legitimately be reached using statistics, from misrepresentation of data to people lying in surveys. Expect a humorous journey through the subject area and the chance to take part in some live experiments. This talk is your chance to do some very bad statistics and also learn how to avoid these classic pitfalls.

We will also have some performing arts and someone from the community telling us how they’re Trying Their Best.

Then as usualy, mass singalongs to some of our favourite pop songs and drinking a vat of tea afterwards!

We’re also continuing SA London Labs, where we’ll be experimenting with all the elements that make Sunday Assembly, bringing in community ideas and getting collaborative to make our community the best we can be!

Please remember, Sunday Assembly London is free to attend and runs entirely on donations. Please support us if you can to keep it free for those who can’t.

Purpose and Passion

• 1st December 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: Caroline Ludbrook

What gives your life purpose? How do you bring fire and passion to the work you do? Caroline Ludbrook, this week’s main speaker, inspires others to greatness as a regional manager for Shannon Trust, a charity which aims to teach people in the prison system to learn to read. But Caroline’s path to finding her purpose in life began much earlier, when she started volunteering with the Brownies at age 14. Caroline’s years as a Brownie leader have taught her how to find the passion within herself to not only achieve her own goals, but help others to reach theirs.

In addition to Caroline’s inspiring talk, we’ll also belt out some of our favourite sing-along pop tunes, hear how a member of the community is Trying Their Best, and afterwards, celebrate with tea and cake.

We’re also continuing SA London Labs by experimenting with all the elements that compose Sunday Assembly, gathering feedback from everyone in attendance and collaborating to make our community the best it can be!

A Star is Born

• 15th December 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: Harry Cliff
• Poet: Jenny Mitchell

For our last assembly of the year, our main speaker is Harry Cliff, the renowned particle physicist who puts the ‘cool’ in Newton’s Law of Cooling! He will take us on a journey through the life cycle of stars, and explain how one in particular may have had an enormous impact on the story of Christmas: The Star of Bethlehem.

We will also hear poetry from our very own Jenny Mitchell, joint winner of the annual Geoff Stevens’ Memorial Poetry Prize. Her debut collection, Her Lost Language, is the Poetry Kit Book of the Month for November 2019.

And we’ll sing some of our favourite sing-along pop tunes (including a couple of Christmas classics to get you in the spirit for our upcoming Yule Rock!), and celebrate afterwards with tea and cake.

This assembly will be the final experiment of SA London Labs, in which we have played with all the elements that compose Sunday Assembly, gathering feedback from everyone in attendance and collaborating to make our community the best it can be. Please be sure to leave your feedback on the paper slips placed on each seat.

Yule Rock 2019

• 19th December 2019

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