The point of Article Club is to challenge ourselves to read a diverse range of articles, share them with like-minded people and deal with our anxiety that we aren’t reading books.
Here is a recap of how the club works:
1. We meet every six weeks or so in the National Theatre building in Central London. 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 and 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.
Sunday Assembly’s International Women’s Day 2025 Special was an inspirational, emotional hour. Read on to find out how…
Our guest speaker: Anna Herber
Previously a guest poet at Sunday Assembly, we were delighted to welcome back writer, poet and entrepreneur Anna Herber as our speaker.
[Photo credit: Anna Herber, LinkedIn]
Anna helps people move through resistance and fear so they can share powerful messages that question the status quo and grow their impact.
For this special IWD talk, Anna celebrated women who have used their voices to create change, as well as some of the most common ways that women are silenced, and how to overcome them.
Drawing from her own experience, she showed us how to liberate our outspoken inner activist, truth speaker and wisdom keeper – overcoming procrastination and perfectionism, unlocking our courage and amplifying our authentic voice.
An invitation from Ann to help steward the Mile End Parkrun on Sunday 18 May – details here
An invitation from Tanya to come to the Enrich Festival in Watford on the weekend of 26th-27th April. Enrich Festival is an inclusive arts festival showcasing the immense talent of disabled and neurodivergent artists and performers. The Sunday Assembly London band are performing on the Sunday.
A bonus guest poet
Inspired by Anna’s talk, community member Steph read out a poem by her friend, whose experiences in Afghanistan had moved him to urge his fellow men to support women.
As always, we followed the assembly with tea, biscuits and chat at the Backyard Comedy Club, then lunch, drinks & games at The Three Colts pub.
Thanks to our host Emily, co-host Matt, all our wonderful volunteers and everyone who filled the room with singing, laughter and appreciation – especially our first-timers!
Thanks also to everyone who wore purple in support of International Women’s day.
International Women’s Day 2024 at Sunday Assembly
As part of last year’s Sunday Assembly IWD Special, we wrote personal pledges to Inspire Inclusion, that year’s theme. Here’s a selection of our pledges. Click or tap to enlarge:
At Sunday Assembly on 2 March (Everyday Jews), we reintroduced This Much I Know: a segment where we hear from a member of the Sunday Assembly community on a topic close to their heart.
David Goldstein explained why he started coming to Sunday Assembly and shared some good news involving a grant application.
Here’s an abridged version of David’s speech.
“I heard about Sunday Assembly in 2013, its first year. I immediately liked the idea. Then I started coming along… 10 years later.
So what spurred me into coming?
2023 was the year I really started thinking that I needed something more in the structure of my life, other than family and work. There was a musical that came out that year called Subspace Rhapsody, and I was particularly struck by the song How Would That Feel, which includes the line, “It might be time to change my paradigm.”
And then came the events of the 7th of October, which left a lot of us feeling vulnerable in a way we hadn’t before.
Sunday Assembly popped back into my mind, and I thought, “Here’s a community where I can hear voices other than my own – singing voice included – and I’ve got more to gain by walking through those doors than I have to lose.”
The fact that I’ve kept coming to Sunday Assembly is a testament to how welcoming everyone’s been, and I reached the point where I wanted to give something back, so I’ve done two things.
One was to offer some ideas about Sunday Assembly’s marketing, and I’ve ended up joining the crew of marketing volunteers.
As for the other thing… Marketing’s also my day job. I’m the copywriter at an accountancy firm called BKL, which has a charitable foundation called The BKL Foundation, which allocates a percentage of BKL’s profits to good causes. The trustees are BKL employees but it operates independently of BKL. I decided to request a grant for Sunday Assembly. So I wrote an email to the Foundation explaining why Sunday Assembly was a worthy cause that fitted their criteria.
And at their February meeting, The BKL Foundation trustees decided to award Sunday Assembly a grant… of £,5000!
Thank you to The BKL Foundation, and to all of you as Sunday Assemblers for being part of something that’s worth every penny of that grant.
The thing to do now is to keep going. Make sure that if BKL check back in six months, a year, to see how it’s going, we can show them how we’ve built on that grant. You’re all part of Sunday Assembly’s marketing. So please, forward the Sunday Assembly newsletters, share the social media posts, do your own posts tagging Sunday Assembly, and keep telling people about us. Just tell them not to wait 10 years before they give it a try.
I thought about signing off today with ‘Kind regards’, but no one has ever said “Kind regards” in an actual conversation, except for the King. It’s documented: 9th of March 2021. So Instead I’ll end with the sign-off that the future Queen Mother used in 1941:
‘Tinkety-tonk, old fruit, and down with the Nazis.’”
From the Sunday Assembly trustees…
Sunday Assembly London wishes to sincerely thank The BKL Foundation for its very generous grant of £5,000. This vital financial support will help Sunday Assembly London to continue offering community engagement, and connection through our inclusive, secular gatherings.
With this funding we can expand our programmes, enhance our events, and reach even more people with our core values: Live Better, Help Often and Wonder More.
Here’s David’s photo of Karen, our treasurer, meeting The BKL Foundation chair and some of their trustees at BKL’s North London office.
The book was inspired by Keith’s growing sense, as a Jew, that the Jewish people are now so public, so significant, so loved and so hated that the everyday stuff of Jewish life risks becoming ‘hollowed out’. In response, he aims to show that Jews can also be boring, mediocre and mundane, and that the ‘secular’ aspects of Jewish religious practice are often ignored but are the beating heart of Jewish religious life.
We learned how synagogues are as much about supper quizzes and social life as they are about communing with the divine, and the value in remembering that Jewish life can have its mundane and mediocre moments too.
Our guest performance: comedy from Rabbi Mendy Korer
We also welcomed jogger, chess player and stand-up comedian Rabbi Mendy Korer to this Assembly!
Founder of Chabad Islington, the only Jewish community centre in Islington, he loves to find ways to connect with people from diverse backgrounds, particularly through the human, spiritual and comedic relatability of Chassidic ultra-orthodox Jews.
Our songs
Our Sunday Assembly band performed three songs written and/or sung by Jewish artists:
The Life of Riley – The Lightning Seeds
Eternal Flame – The Bangles
Valerie – as sung by Amy Winehouse
This Much I Know
Today we reintroduced This Much I Know: a segment where we hear from a member of the Sunday Assembly community on a topic close to their heart.
This time, David Goldstein explained why he started coming to Sunday Assembly 10 years after hearing about us… and shared some big news about a grant application he’s been involved with. Find out more here
Notices
Topics of our notices included:
Our Book Swap table (where swapping is not compulsory)
Our first ever comedy fundraiser, bringing four fantastic comedians to you on 10th April – details here
As always, we followed the assembly with tea, biscuits and chat (and a sip of Palwin Jewish wine from Keith) at the Backyard Comedy Club, Lunch Club (at Hulya’s Cafe) and drinks & games at The Three Colts pub.
Thanks to our host Hanna, co-host Shane, all our wonderful volunteers and everyone who filled the room with singing, laughter and appreciation – especially our first-timers!
The point of Sunday Assembly Article Club is to challenge ourselves to read a diverse range of articles, share them with like-minded people and deal with our anxiety that we aren’t reading books.
How Article Club works
1. We meet every six weeks or so in or near the National Theatre, hosted by Alistair. 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 and 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.
If you really, really want to know what we did at this Sunday Assembly, read on!
Our guest speaker: Adam Taffler
Desires often get a bad press. From religion to popular culture, they’re painted as dangerous and uncontrollable forces to be suppressed or ignored.
Yet our desires are really messengers of what matters most. A healthy relationship with our needs and wants is vital – it’s the foundation of personal autonomy, authentic relationships, and our own sacred unfolding.
For our Valentine’s Special, we were thrilled to welcome Adam Taffler, a facilitator and authentic communication coach, to help us all understand how to better articulate what we need and want in our relationships. Adam’s mission is making human connection a higher priority in culture. Known for founding the Togetherness movement and creating Shhh Dating (a silent speed dating experience), he designs spaces where genuine connection flourishes.
We were also excited to have some spoken word from Michael McKimm, an East London-based poet, originally from Ireland. His most recent book Because We Could Not Dance At The Wedding is about love in a long-term gay relationship and finding joy in an uncertain world.
Courtesy of the Sunday Assembly band, we sang four songs with the theme of wanting:
– You’re The One That I Want – John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John – Don’t You Want Me – Human League – We Can Work It Out – The Beatles – Wannabe – Spice Girls (cunningly disguised as Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana)
Notices
Topics of our notices included:
– Our Book Swap table (where swapping is not compulsory) – An invitation to volunteer at the Mile End parkrun on 16 March – Our sister assembly in Reading, The Sunday Alternative – Our next Article Club on 20th February – details here – Our first ever comedy fundraiser, bringing four fantastic comedians to you on 10th April – details here
As always, we followed the assembly with tea, biscuits and chat at the Backyard Comedy Club, Lunch Club (at Nando’s) and drinks & games at The Three Colts.
Thanks to our host Stuart, co-host Alan, all our wonderful volunteers and everyone who filled the room with singing, laughter and appreciation – especially our first-timers!
In 1999, in a rural area of Australia, a woman noticed that many of the retired, local miners and veterans were suffering from a sense of isolation and purposelessness; missing working with their fellow men. Coinciding with a developing awareness of a crisis within men’s mental health, a pilot workshop was put together, inviting men to come and restore furniture and fix appliances, allowing them to connect with the people around them, and learn new skills.
‘Men’s Sheds’, as they came to be known, are now a global phenomenon, with nearly 3,000 sheds operating in 12 countries, including Ireland, UK, New Zealand, Canada, US, Kenya, and South Africa.
In 2014, Professor Barry Golding coined the term “”shedagogy”” to describe “a distinctive, new way of acknowledging, describing and addressing the way some men prefer to learn informally in shed-like spaces mainly with other men”
We are joined by Founder and Life President of the UK’s branch of MSA, Mike Jenn, who has worked in practical social innovations for 50 years across community education and relieving deprivation. He shared with us how the charities’ “shedagogy” continues to grow and change lives; fostering community, creativity and tackling life-shortening isolation for many.
We were also treated to some ‘Shedding your inhibitions!’ games by our resident Games Master, Matt!
January is Mental Wellness Month, a time to promote awareness and understanding of our challenges around mental health, as the numbers of people needing support continues to rise in the UK. For any of us who have spent time in hospitals know, they are often the least uplifting of places. Harshly lit, clinical, noisy and sparsely decorated, many hospital spaces seem at odds with a sense of care or healing, beneficial to both patients and staff.
It was a recognition of this grim state of affairs that led to the foundation of Hospital Rooms, the UK arts and mental health charity, which aims to bring creativity, colour, and kindness to mental health hospitals and transform them into places of hope, dignity, and recovery for all.
Co-founder Tim Shaw was with us to talk about the charity’s collaborations with artists, service users, and the NHS, to craft innovative artwork and creative programmes while dispelling stigmas and advocating for culture and creativity in mental health as a universal human right. Hospital Rooms has worked with artists such as Richard Wentworth, Anish Kapoor and Sonia Boyce and were awarded Quality Improvement Project of the Year 2018 by NAPICU.
Hospital Rooms
Our guest poet: Rachel Lewis
We also welcomed Rachel Lewis, a poet and creative facilitator interested in hidden pain, everyday joy and love beyond romance. Her first pamphlet on eating disorder recovery, Three Degrees of Separation, was published by Wordsmith HQ.
Happy 12th birthday Sunday Assembly! And Happy New Yeeaaarr!
Along with the requisite fireworks, bubbles and the dash for snogs at midnight, the idea of New Year also brings forth the pressure of New Year’s Resolutions.
Whether it’s to lose that last ten pounds, quit smoking or finally take up the Cha Cha, more and more people are realising that the conventional idea of New Year’s Resolutions, are all based on external measures, and can actually be harmful to our wellbeing. Even when they are about health and fitness, the underlying purpose tends to be for something outside of ourselves, putting us under pressure to be ‘better’.
Following a 16 year career in social work, Tamu Thomas is now a leading somatic specialist, leadership coach, author and workshop facilitator with a specialism in combating ‘toxic productivity’. In this talk she invited us all to consider resolutions that make us feel vibrant and alive rather than as a covert means to fix ourselves.
Living more sumptuously is about feeling full, satiated, satisfied, and Tamu believes that when we each do this individual work, we collectively benefit from a more positive, productive, and purposeful culture.
In August 2024, environmentalist and barrister, Paul Powlesland made history, by becoming the first member of a UK jury to swear an oath on a river: his beloved River Roding, where he both lives and spends time restoring. A co-founder of the River Roding Trust, Paul has also worked with locals to plant hundreds of trees, remove over a thousand bags of rubbish and hoist precisely 75 shopping trolleys from the Roding’s clay-thick riverbed.
We were thrilled to welcome Paul to Sunday Assembly today to share his journey and his wisdom on the things that we can all do to be better stewards to the natural world. Paul is also co-founder of Lawyers for Nature, an advocacy group calling for the UK to grant rivers a legal right of protection.
Guest poet: Esme May Finch
We were also excited to have some spoken word from Esme Fay Finch, a poet, children’s author and forest school teacher, whose project Ways of the Wild inspires and educates children about environmental matters through storytelling, art workshops and dance.
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