Main Events

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.

Tamu Thomas’s website: Live Three Sixty

Our guest speaker: Paul Powlesland

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.

Our guest speaker: John Graves

In our post-capitalist society it is easy to wonder why so many of us are still struggling with a feeling of meaninglessness.

More than 2000 years ago, Aristotle, Epicurus and the Stoics were pondering the same things and providing potential solutions to this dilemma.

John Graves is a teacher of Psychotherapeutic Studies, Life Coach, and life-long philosophy student sparked by the early teachings of his Greek mother.

He introduced us to some of the wisdom from our Ancient Agony Uncles – showing us how relevant these ideas still are and how closely they matched Sunday Assembly’s own three-part philosophy of living better, helping often and wondering more.

Our guest poet: Anna Herber

We were also thrilled to have spoken word poetry by Anna Herber – a poet, songwriter & speaker – who has helped so many people find an inner sense of purpose.

Watch one of Anna’s Sunday Assembly poetry readings on Instagram

Our guest speaker: Dr. Peter Altman

Sniff sniff, dribble dribble, cough cough. As we creep ever more into the cold and darkness of winter, we may all be feeling more under the weather than usual, with an increase in ill health rising significantly over the winter months, when the body is less effective in fighting off infections.

Antibiotics have been a central part of our society’s approach to managing infectious diseases for nearly a century. But how were they discovered, and when and by whom? And does it really involve a 3,500 year old mouldy sandwich from Ancient Egypt?

Dr. Peter Altman is a biochemist, medical researcher and publisher and a veteran magician, having been a member of the Magic Circle since 1984. He shared some of his latest research from his third book, currently in production, Amazing Discoveries in Science.

Our guest poet: Kay Scorah

We were also thrilled to have some poetry from former biochemist herself, Kay Scorah, who brought 70 years’ worth of experiment and creativity to her writing.

The world of maths is one of the most abstract realms of human understanding. Whilst some of us find it logical, satisfying and beautiful, many of us struggle with the challenges of its concepts, find numbers difficult to comprehend, or may have been discouraged by traditional methods of teaching.

We were joined by artist, musician and numberphobe-turned-numberphile Brook Tate. As someone who severely struggled with mainstream methods of education, he designed a new a unique method to help people of all ages learn, understand and quite possibly, fall in love with maths.

Multicolour Maths is a new method designed to help children and adults learn the foundations of mathematics using only colours and shapes, opening up the world of mathematics into endlessly beautiful patterns and helping students of all ages understand and appreciate the language of the universe.

Since first inventing the method in India in January 2024, Brook has presented it to the Head of Maths Education at Bristol University, the British Society of Research into Learning Mathematics, The British Library’s Inventors Club and the Alan Turing Institute. The BBC is also currently developing a short feature on the project.

Brook also performed a song from his recent musical theatre piece.

Brook Tate’s website

Multicolour Maths website

This assembly was accompanied by our Winter Market.

According to the Slavery Footprint survey, the average family in the UK unknowingly employs 90 slaves, often hidden in plain sight.

Sunday Assembly’s own Dr Astrid Leuba has been working against modern slavery and human trafficking for many years. Formerly Head of Corporate Responsibility at British Airways, she is now developing anti-slavery strategy and policy for Cancer Research UK and was recently nominated as Star of the Year for her work by Unseen, a UK charity running the UK Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline and providing safehouses for survivors of modern slavery and human trafficking.

Astrid guided us through how we can learn to identify signs of potential modern slavery, knowing how to report them, and better understand this troubled system of which we are all a part.

We were also joined by spoken word artist Amy Anam Cara, whose work reflects on the impacts of colonialism and imperialism on mental health and the ways in which the comfort of the global North demands the continued oppression of the global South.

Wouldn’t we all love to do things just ‘because’, without the pressure to have a good reason?

Steve Chapman is an artist, writer, speaker, consultant and coach, who encourages people to do just that! Interested in creativity and the human condition, he works with individuals and organisations to find creative and counter-intuitive ways to help free themselves from ever-tightening loops of stuckness, shame and imperfection, nurturing, instead, the freedom of spontaneous self-expression, creativity and innovation.

Hanna Finn wrote:

‘Sunday Assembly featured a talk by artist Steve Chapman, who told us about his hilarious art projects which often include the general public in weird and wonderful ways.

We took several creative challenges from his book WTFebruary and smooshed them into one:

1. Use discarded materials (an orange window blind someone was throwing out)
2. Draw birds, badly. Add made up bird sounds and names.
3. Start your own art gallery

Alan and I workshopped the name of the gallery by asking the audience to give us adjectives and bird names, and then randomly choosing two words. Then everyone was encouraged to draw birds (badly) before I strung them onto black string.’

We also had poetry from Kay Scorah, a multi-skilled creative who brings 70 years of experiment, risk, rage and learning to her writing.

Is age just a number?

You may have heard of the Baby Boomers, the Millennials and Gen Z. But have you heard of the Young Olds, the Mid Olds or the Old Olds? As human life expectancy has increased, there have been significant step changes in the way we perceive our life stages and their significance, and new research is proffering ever more nuanced categorisations of our experiences as a distinct ‘Generation’.

Vivien Louizos is a Counsellor and Life Coach for young people and adults, with a special interest in developmental psychology. Her research centres on the emergence of new categories in the life cycle, and the influence of our chronological age on the choices and decisions that we make.

As we continue to live later and longer, how do the determinants of our life experience change? To what extent are we influenced in our life choices by our age, and the unique circumstances of our stage of life? How real is the phenomenon of ‘My Generation’ – and is it biology, psychology, or the idiosyncrasies of the times in which we are born?

We also had a multigenerational poetry slot, with Gale Burns and Nadira Clare Wallace each offering some spoken word across the generation gap.

Gale Burns wrote:

‘Great fun to read poetry at the Sunday Assembly (a secular celebration on a Sunday in Bethnal Green) with Nadira Clare Wallace on the theme of different generations. Drop by one week, and you get free cake!’

Photo credit: Gale Burns

I Scream, You Scream! To mark the closing of our summer season, we paid homage to that oh so sweet, delectable and enduring symbol of Summertime to both young and old – the mighty ice cream cone!

Sunday Assembly’s own Tom Boulton has worked as an ice cream scientist for Unilever and Little Moons for 10 years. Today he enlightened us with a talk on the history and culture of this most iconic sweet treat; the technology and processes in how it is made and what goes into concocting the best flavours.

We also welcomed back Morwenna James, spoken word artist and published poet who uses radical honesty and self-deprecation to explore universal themes with a playful, humorous slant.

Watch Morwenna performing her poem Different Ice Cream for Sunday Assembly

We followed this Sunday Assembly with an ice cream crawl around East London!

→ Our next assembly: Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation, 15 September
← Our previous assembly: Cantat Ergo Sumus: Hymns of the Philosophers, 21 July

Ever been moved by Nietzsche’s philosophical musings, but been desperate to hear them sung in the style of Bob Dylan? We were joined by the inimitable Paul Lodge, musician and Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University, who does just that!

This was a titillating blend of music, philosophy and literature as Paul offered his unique musical interpretations of the work of Nietzsche as well as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walter Benjamin and Margaret Cavendish.

Paul’s songs have been featured on BBC Radio Oxford Introducing and BBC Radio Cumbria. In 2022 he launched his album Preludes to Wordsworth in the poet’s home, Rydal Mount, at the invitation of Wordsworth’s descendants.

Cantat Ergo Sumus is Latin for It sings, therefore we are.

We were also joined by comedian and poet Sam Rix who brought us a joyous medley of hilarious spoken word exploring creativity, social media and everything in between.

There were four fantastic songs performed by our very own Sunday Assembly Band, followed by tea, biscuits and chats with members of our community.

This was our last Sunday Assembly before we took our customary break over August. But before that we had our equally customary post-Assembly picnic and Boardgames Club.

→ Our next assembly: Sundae Assembly Special – The Inside Scoop, 1 September 2024
← Our previous assembly: Space Oddity, 7 July 2024