Homelessness can happen to anyone. Redundancy, relationship breakdown, illness or a sudden change in circumstance can turn even a stable life upside down. During these winter months, when cold, isolation and vulnerability intensify, the reality of homelessness becomes even more concerning.
Guest speaker: Jasmine Awad
Jasmine Awad is CEO of Unseen Tours, an award-winning social enterprise offering alternative walking tours of London led by people with lived experience of homelessness. Their guides share personal stories and hidden histories from some of London’s most vibrant neighbourhoods, inviting us to rethink what it truly means to be homeless.
By creating opportunities for connection with homeless and formerly homeless individuals, Unseen Tours helps give visibility and a voice to those who are so often unseen and unheard.
As usual, there will be four pop songs performed by our Sunday Assembly London band and reflecting today’s themes. You’ll find out which ones at the assembly, or you may spot clues on our social media…
The lyrics will be projected on screen and everyone’s welcome to sing (and dance) along.
About Sunday Assembly London
Sunday Assembly London is your regular and reliable stop for a welcoming, accessible and inspiring Sunday community, where you can hear talks and poetry, sing songs and make new friends.
Stay after for tea, biscuits, and chat in the Backyard Comedy Club. Then join us for a local meal, picnic, or a drink and card games at the pub.
Join us for lunch after our assembly on 1st February!
When the weather is good we eat outside and ask people to bring blankets and food to share. On colder days, we head for a local restaurant, café or pub that serves food. (We’ll confirm which one during the assembly.)
Keep an eye on the weather and event listing in case we need to change venue. And if you have any portable games, bring them too. Newcomers are very welcome.
Article Club is where the Sunday Assembly London community read a diverse range of articles, share them with like-minded people and deal with our anxiety that we aren’t reading books.
This will be our 74th meeting and it’s never too late to join! Just like at our assemblies, we love welcoming new members and their unique opinions.
How Article Club works
1. We meet every 1-2 months in the National Theatre building in Central London by the river. We go for the round seats in the Lyttelton Theatre bar on the first floor.
2. We vote in advance and pick two articles from a short list to read before we meet. Usually one relates to politics/current affairs and the other to history, culture or science.
3. We talk about each one for around half an hour. The beauty of Article Club is that we can think more deeply about the broader themes of a topic, and how well the article gets to grips with them.
4. We each give a score out of 10 for the articles that have been discussed.
5. We set the date for the next Article Club and sometimes adjourn to the pub.
Look out for details of our next Article Club. And to meet more of the Sunday Assembly London community while learning about a new or familiar topic, you’re always welcome at our Sunday Assemblies too!
Who says January has to be ‘that sad month after December’? Join Sunday Assembly London and Quantum Leopard on 22nd January for an evening of shared laughter, well-crafted comedy and birthday joy!
January is the month Sunday Assembly London started – with entertaining, informative, non-religious get-togethers co-hosted by two comedians. What better way to celebrate than by lining up two fabulous comedians to entertain you?
One of those performers, and our host for the evening, is James Ross, whose Quantum Leopard comedy nights have a ten-year record of showcasing stand-up that doesn’t punch down. James will bring you his unique take on Guess Who? which he describes as ‘a very silly party show’.
Thom Tuck, our other performer, is hailed as ‘erudite, energetic and overtly bendy’. You’ll be treated to a preview of his forthcoming show about adorable animals.
As experienced stand-ups bringing you fresh material, James and Thom will make sure that Laugh Your Assembly Off! lives up to its name, and leave you in no doubt about why the Quantum Leopard format has won six Chortle Awards.
How much will it cost you to take in that incredible talent? Just £15, or £5 if you’re on a low income or precariously employed.
When: Thursday 22nd January from 7:30pm to 10pm (doors open at 7:30pm; show starts at 8pm)
Where: COLAB Tower, 22 Southwark Bridge Road, London SE1 9HB
The sooner you get your ticket, the sooner you can look forward to laughing in the face of winter!
This Valentine’s weekend, we’re getting real about love: the everyday kind that builds the type of communities, friendships and resilience we cherish at Sunday Assembly London!
Guest speaker: Adela Apetroaia
Adela is a senior lecturer and psychotherapist known as the Love Doctress. She explores how love shows up in all forms: not just romance, but in friendship, community, creativity and self-acceptance.
Drawing on years of experience in psychology, bodywork and relational coaching, Adela will share practical insights on how we can build more honest, heart-led connections in a time of increasing disconnection.
Guest poet: Morwenna James
We love welcoming new speakers and poets to our stage, and we also love welcoming back familiar voices like Morwenna. She’s a spoken word artist and published poet who uses radical honesty and self-deprecation to explore universal themes with a playful, humorous slant.
As usual, there will be four pop songs performed by our Sunday Assembly London band and reflecting today’s themes. You’ll find out which ones at the assembly, or you may spot clues on our social media…
The lyrics will be projected on screen and everyone’s welcome to sing (and dance) along.
About Sunday Assembly London
Sunday Assembly London is your regular and reliable stop for a welcoming, accessible and inspiring Sunday community, where you can hear talks and poetry, sing songs and make new friends.
Stay after for tea, biscuits, and chat in the Backyard Comedy Club. Then join us for a local meal, picnic, or a drink and card games at the pub.
An inspiring talk from footballer and coach Jude Geoghegan, national winner of the Disability Pathway Coach of the Year award 2025.
With personal experience of spina bifida and an extraordinary story of resilience, Jude has created inclusive football opportunities for young people with disabilities. He is currently an ambassador for BBC Children in Need.
Jude shared how sport changed his life and how coaching became his platform for the kind of community change we love to support here at Sunday Assembly London!
Guest poet: Leilah King
Bringing us her own unique perspective on the world of football, Leilah is a half-Iranian queer footballer and coach, mental health advocate and stand-up poet.
Our singalongs
As usual, there were four pop songs performed by our Sunday Assembly London band. They reflected today’s theme by being songs often sung at, or adapted for, sporting events.
Three Lions – Lightning Seeds, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner
I Predict a Riot – Kaiser Chiefs
Freed from Desire – Gala
Sweet Caroline – Neil Diamond
The lyrics will be projected on screen and everyone’s welcome to sing (and dance) along.
About Sunday Assembly London
Sunday Assembly London is your regular and reliable stop for a welcoming, accessible and inspiring Sunday community, where you can hear talks and poetry, sing songs and make new friends.
Stay after for tea, biscuits, and chat in the Backyard Comedy Club. Then join us for a local meal, picnic, or a drink and card games at the pub.
Sunday 6th January 2013 was when it all started. Almost 200 people turned up at The Nave on St. Paul’s Road in Islington for a get-together that promised to ‘solace worries, provoke kindness and inject a bit more whizziness into the everyday.’
Our first speaker, children’s author Andy Stanton, told us how his first book took almost a decade of dropping out and dead end jobs to write.
As you can see from the artwork, we called ourselves The Sunday Assembly back then. Little did our co-founders Pippa Evans and Sanderson Jones realise how that ‘The’ would be overtaken, with hundreds of assemblies to follow and dozens of Sunday Assembly communities in the UK & internationally!
Our 5th birthday speaker was Rufus Hound. Tying in with our theme of Light in the Darkness, Rufus spoke about the role of hope in our lives, how faith can provide it and how those without faith can still can embrace it.
2020: Change of Heart Conservationist Margot Raggett helped us explore how we can make changes for the better, both in our personal lives and in the world around us. Comedic singer/songwriter Gecko returned to entertain us.
2021: Improv your Year Our 8th birthday speaker was none other than Sunday Assembly London co-founder Pippa Evans. Pippa explained how life is one big improvisation and all of our interactions with the world are made of quick decisions based on what’s available to us.
We couldn’t celebrate this birthday in person, but the good news is that because we were using Zoom and YouTube, we recorded it! Watch the recording here
2022: It’s My Party and I’ll Dry if I Want To A hybrid assembly. Our guest speaker was Laura Willoughby, co-founder of Club Soda. Laura taught us all about ‘mindful drinking’, and how we can empower ourselves to make conscious decisions about our alcohol consumption. Gecko performed for us again too.
Those of us who gathered in Conway Hall had a birthday lunch in Nando’s afterwards.
2024: Send in the Clowns Embracing the playfulness that none of us should lose as we age, our guests were clown Afa Simpson and poet Paul Matthews.
2026: 13 and we feel lucky! Fast-forward to our first teenage birthday and we kept up our recipe for success with a speaker from our community (Hanna Finn on everyday creativity), plenty of singing and generous helpings of tea and homemade cake, followed by a local lunch and a trip to the pub.
Thank you to everyone who’s celebrated our birthdays with us and the many assemblies in between. You’ve helped to build an in-person community and that’s no small thing. Here’s to another year of Living Better, Helping Often and Wondering More.
We meet at the Backyard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green at 11am on the first & third Sundays of the month (most months). You can arrive any time from 10:30am with no need to book and no pressure to pay (though donations are very welcome).
If you’re looking for learning, laughter and a little less loneliness in London, we can’t wait to welcome you in 2026. We were all Sunday Assembly London first-timers once, and we know how daunting it can be – but once you’ve taken that step through our doors, the rest is a piece of cake!
Happy New Year and Happy Birth-month to Sunday Assembly London! (Our first assembly was in January 2013.)
Many of us start each new year with big plans for a new creative hobby. Pottery classes and embroidery workshops fill up quickly, but for many people their new hobbies end up being one off experiences rather than lifelong creative pursuits.
Being creative is not just about becoming really skilled in knitting or drawing, or some other craft. It’s a way of making decisions and coming up with solutions to problems. There is plenty of research suggesting that being in the habit of small scale creativity stimulates multiple areas of the brain, promoting better memory, focus and problem-solving skills.
Our guest speaker: Hanna Finn
Sunday Assembly London’s own Hanna Finn has spent decades developing her skills in crochet, embroidery, weaving, baking, hat making and many other creative pursuits, and also regularly arranges her dinner to resemble a face.
Hanna took us through the kind of creative activities anyone can incorporate into their everyday life without spending any money or taking hours to master.
Birthday cake
We invited all the bakers in the Sunday Assembly London community to bake us a birthday cake and bring it along.
Those who were more King Alfred than Mary Berry were encouraged to give us a charitable donation in honour of our birthday and help yourself to what’s on offer!
Our singalongs
‘As usual, there will be four pop songs performed by our Sunday Assembly London band and reflecting today’s themes. You’ll find out which ones at the assembly, or you may spot clues on our social media closer to the time.
The lyrics will be projected on screen and everyone’s welcome to sing (and dance) along.’
The songs were
Celebration – Kool & The Gang
Teenage Kicks – The Undertones
One Day Like This – Elbow
Teenage Dirtbag – Wheatus
About Sunday Assembly London
Sunday Assembly London is your regular and reliable stop for a welcoming, accessible and inspiring Sunday community, where you can hear talks and poetry, sing songs and make new friends.
Stay after for tea, biscuits, and chat in the Backyard Comedy Club. Then join us for a local meal, picnic, or a drink and card games at the pub.
Article Club is where the Sunday Assembly London community read a diverse range of articles, share them with like-minded people and deal with our anxiety that we aren’t reading books.
This will be our 73rd meeting and it’s never too late to join! Just like at our assemblies, we love welcoming new members and their unique opinions.
How Article Club works
1. We meet every 1-2 months in the National Theatre building in Central London by the river. We go for the round seats in the Lyttelton Theatre bar on the first floor.
2. We vote in advance and pick two articles from a short list to read before we meet. Usually one relates to politics/current affairs and the other to history, culture or science.
3. We talk about each one for around half an hour. The beauty of Article Club is that we can think more deeply about the broader themes of a topic, and how well the article gets to grips with them.
4. We each give a score out of 10 for the articles that have been discussed.
5. We set the date for the next Article Club and sometimes adjourn to the pub.
There will also be an Article Club on 26 February. And to meet more of the Sunday Assembly London community while learning about a new or familiar topic, you’re always welcome at our Sunday Assemblies too!
Throughout Earth’s history, evolutionary big bangs like the Carnian pluvial episode have brought fundamental change – and some believe we are approaching the biggest one yet. The consequences could be profound: ushering in a new era of intelligence, or putting us at risk of irrelevance… or even extinction like world-dominating species who came before us.
But instead of despairing, join us to chew it over! (And to wash it down with a nice cup of tea.).
Guest speaker: Dr Nash Popovic
Nash Popovic is a former Senior Lecturer at the University of East London, author, and founder of The Synthesis: a website which brings together science and spirituality to explore the perennial question of the meaning of life.
Blending science, philosophy and human experience, Nash will help us explore how rapidly accelerating change could shape the future of humanity – and why, at times like this, curiosity, compassion and everyday choices matter more than ever.
Sunday Assembly London’s own Kay Scorah will be back on stage with her entertainingly irreverent verse.
Our singalongs
As usual, there will be four pop songs performed by our Sunday Assembly London band and reflecting today’s themes. You’ll find out which ones at the assembly, or you may spot clues on our social media…
The lyrics will be projected on screen and everyone’s welcome to sing (and dance) along.
About Sunday Assembly London
Sunday Assembly London is your regular and reliable stop for a welcoming, accessible and inspiring Sunday community, where you can hear talks and poetry, sing songs and make new friends.
Stay after for tea, biscuits, and chat in the Backyard Comedy Club. Then join us for a local meal, picnic, or a drink and card games at the pub.
→ Our next assembly:Grief and the Perseverance of Love (TBC), 15th March ← Our previous assembly:The Love Doctress Is In!, 18th February
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