Main Events

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

Photos on Facebook

6th Birthday Celebrations

• 6th January 2019, 11:00am
• Speakers: Tiu de Haan, Shamash Alidina

Our first assembly for 2019 AND our 6th ‘golden’ Birthday! What a date!

Join us in kicking 2019 off with a bombastic BANG and celebrate the past 6 years of Sunday Assembly with 6 of our favourite people from the past year on the 6th of Jan!

It’s a total treat and call us greedy, but, to celebrate this momentous date we will be having not one but TWO speakers, TWO poets and TWO Trying My Best speakers from yesteryear! Don’t say we don’t spoil you!

We are so excited to have Tiu de Haan back to talk to us about the importance of rituals and lead us in a Sunday Assembly ritual. Tiu is a ritual designer, creative facilitator, inspirational speaker, voiceover artist and musician. She creates experiences designed to connect us to our creativity, to each other, to ourselves and to the possibility of wonder.

Our second speaker is Shamash Alidina, co-founder of the Museum of Happiness, author of Mindfulness for Dummies and all round expert on Kindfulness! Shamash will be leading us on an extra special mediation to get our heads in the right space for the year ahead!

This Sunday Assembly will be hosted by our co-founder Sanderson Jones and we will have two of our favourite poets from 2018 performing.

We’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

Trusting Your Superpower

• 20th January 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: CK Goldiing
• Poet: Laurie Bolger

It’s time to take a little look inwards and onwards to 2019 and beyond!

So, let’s cut to the chase, what are your superpowers? And are you expressing them in your daily life?

For our next assembly we have CK Goldiing coming to teach us all to TRUST OURSELVES and how to live out our superpowers TO THE MAX!

Our speaker this week is writer, creator & presenter, CK’s uplifting stories have been championed by BBC, Huffington Post, Red Bull, Metro & Evening Standard. Fascinated by the psychology of everyday people, his projects are rooted in his spontaneous interactions with strangers – ordinary people he encounters in his everyday life.

In 2018, his debut short film, ’61 HUGS’ is CK’s most personal story yet, revealing what happened when he approached 61 total strangers in the street, and asked each for a hug.

A self-confessed overthinker, forever battling his own crippling self-talk, CK comes to Sunday Assembly London to share how he overcomes his intrusive inner dialogue and finds the will to create such bold, ambitious, inspiring stories.

This Sunday Assembly will be hosted by our co-founder Sanderson Jones and we will have the amazing Laurie Bolger doing some poetry for us.

We’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

Running For a Reason

• 3rd February 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: Ivo Gormley
• Poet: John Wheeler

With January now over, maybe all of your very well intended health/ fitness/ wellbeing goals have taken a bit of a back seat, as the reality of 2019 sets in… Are you looking for a reason to get back on track? A ‘Reason To Run’, perhaps?

This week we have the Ivo Gormley from the GoodGym coming to help us get up, get out and get motivated! This assembly is all about Living Better and Helping Often! Pow Pow!

Goodgym is a growing movement of runners who run to help older people and community organisations. As well as starting that, Ivo has worked on increasing user participation for technology startups and public services in the UK and US. He directed the documentary film Us Now, an exploration of participatory culture which was broadcast around the world and his film The Runners has been watched by millions!

This Sunday Assembly will be hosted by our co-founder Sanderson Jones and we will have the wonderful John Wheeler doing some poetry for us.

We’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

Living With OCD

• 7th February 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: Dr David Adam
• Poet: Christy Ku

Have you ever had a strange urge to jump from a tall building, or steer your car into oncoming traffic? You are not alone. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder comes in many shapes and forms and affects around 1.2% of the UK population.

This week we are very excited to have best selling author Dr David Adam coming to speak with us! David is the author of Sunday Star Times best seller ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Stop – The Truth About OCD’.

David will teach us about what it’s like to live with OCD and explore the weird thoughts that exist within every mind, and how they drive millions of us towards obsessions and compulsions. This assembly will be sure to challenge the way you think about what is normal, and what is mental illness.

This Sunday Assembly will be hosted by our co-founder Sanderson Jones( his last assembly hosting for a few months!) and we will have the wonderful Christy Ku doing some poetry for us.

We’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

There’s More To Reading Than Words

• 3rd March 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: Anj Cairns
• Poet: Esi Yankey

I’m going to assume that (unless you have some futuristic dictating technology or someone is reading aloud), if you’re reading this right now, you can probably read.

Reading is part of our society, we read to learn, we read to stay connected, to keep updated with the world around us – to broaden our horizons. Reading empowers us. But imagine how shut off and disconnected from society you would feel if you couldn’t read?

This Sunday we are so excited to have Anj Cairns the CEO of Shannon Trust – an organisation which supports thousands of prisoners a year to transform their lives by unlocking the power of reading. They inspire and train prisoners who can read to teach prisoners who can’t.

We will also have the wonderful Esi from Poetry Prescribed reading some poems to us.

We’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

The Science of Living Longer

• 17th March 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: Richard Faragher
• Poet: Elie Karslake

What causes ageing? How does it make us ill? Can we all extend our lives beyond 120 years in good health? What will it cost? If we could, would we want to? And if not, why not? The answers are both simple and more complex than you might think.

Our wonderful speaker this week is Richard Faragher – Professor of Biogerontology. Richard works on the relationship between cell and organismal ageing. He is past chair of the British Society for Research on Ageing, the International Association of Biomedical Gerontology and the American Aging Association. He has won the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Medal for his research into the accelerated ageing disease Werner’s syndrome. He is the first scientist to be honoured by Help the Aged for his championship of older people and holds the Lord Cohen of Birkenhead Medal for services to gerontology.

This assembly will be hosted by our co-founder Sanderson Jones. We will also have the amazing Elie Karslake from London Laughter doing poetry for us.

We’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

Why We Dream

• 7th April 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: Alice Robb
• Poet: Daniel Piper

Following the success of our Sleep assembly late last year, we have decided to delve a little deeper into our night-time lives. For the next Sunday Assembly we are asking, Why Do We Dream? And what are dreams?

To answer these questions we are SO excited to have Alice Robb – who has come all the way from New York! Alice is a journalist and the author of Why We Dream: The Transformative Power of Our Nightly Journey, which has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, NPR, The Guardian, Vogue and Elle, and will be translated into thirteen languages. She graduated from Oxford with a BA in Archaeology and Anthropology and lives in Brooklyn.

This assembly will be hosted by our co-founder Sanderson Jones. We will also the wonderful poet Daniel Piper doing spoken word for us.

We’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

Let’s Talk About Drugs

• Thursday 11th April, 7:30pm
• Speakers: Stephen Reid, Dr Will Lawn
• Performer: Gemma Rogers

The third Edition of our ‘Lates’ series is coming to Conway Hall this April! And to keep in line with the more risqué subjects we are tackling in this series – It’s all about drugs!

This is an adult only evening gathering, which is ticketed to raise funds for Sunday Assembly London!

If you sometimes struggle to get up on a Sunday (or know someone who does) and would love to come to a Sunday Assembly where we can talk about things that aren’t suitable for children’s ears, this one is for YOU!

For this Edition of SUNDAY ASSEMBLY LATES we have Co-Founder of the UK Psychedelic Society, Stephen Reid. Stephen is a social entrepreneur, activist and public speaker. Previously, he served as a board member of Greenpeace UK, co-founded the New Economics Foundation’s New Economy Organisers Network and worked as a technology consultant for organisations including the Labour Party, the Green Party and 350.org. Stephen has Masters degrees in Physics from the University of Oxford and Complexity Sciences from the University of Bristol.

Our second speaker is Dr Will Lawn – Post-Doctoral Research Associate at University College London. Will we be talking about his research into the effects of cannabis on the teenage mind & brain and the risk of addiction to various drugs. He has also worked closely with the Global Drug Survey team, investigating the use of novel psychoactive substances.

As we as that we have the AMAZING Gemma Rogers coming to perform for us! What a treat!

Them as always, we’ll have our band welcoming you through the doors, some awesome power ballads and all the best Sunday Assembly joy (but at night!).

We will also have a donation based bar so you can enjoy a drink while you listen/ sing/ dance/ sit.

Come have fun while raising some pennies for this fantastic community!

Accepting Your Body

• 5th May 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: Becky Young
• Other guests: Melanie Bloch

Are you too fat? Too thin? Too tall? Too short? How do you feel about your body? Your appearance? Do you Accept Your Body?

After a short break in April, we are back at Conway Hall on the 5th May and we are talking BODIES! We are SO excited to have Becky Young coming to speak with us. Becky is the founder and director of the Anti Diet Riot Club, who a stirring things up in the world of Body Positivity!

The 5th of May is also WORLD LAUGHTER DAY! So to celebrate that we will also be having Melanie Bloch and the Museum of Happiness along leading us in some laughs!

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.

Out of Your Comfort Zone, But Within Your Own Boundaries

• Sunday 19th May 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: Yaron Engler
• Poet: Jah-Mir Early

We are often being told to ‘go outside of our comfort zone’ but sometimes that’s not so easy to do. It can feel overwhelming at times and out of touch from where we are at. This week we are so excited to have Yaron Engler from UpBeat coming to speak with us. Yaron is a professional drummer who has performed in front of over 500,000 people all around the world.

He is the founder of UpBeat Performance where he helps
organisations of all sizes to boost the levels of trust,
confidence and engagement of their people towards better
results and well-being.

At this assembly Yaron is going to create a space which will allow us to push ourselves, think differently, act differently and remove our defences – but all within the comfort of our personal boundaries.

We also have the Sunday Assembly favourite – Jah-Mir Early coming to perform some spoken word for us!

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.

Embracing Your Weirdness

• 2nd June 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: Steve Chapman

The outsider’s time has come! In a society that is stuck in loops of common sense where we have an unhealthy attachment to expertise and logical, linear thinking, something counter-intuitive is needed. It is time for a creative revolution. One in which the outsider sits at the table alongside the experts. Where the passionately inexpert play a vital role in unsticking stuckness. All that you need to bring is your own unique and beautiful weirdness!

Our speaker for this assembly is the wonderful Steve Chapman! Steve is an artist, writer, philosopher and speaker who is interested in creativity and the human condition. He has spoken around the world on creativity, written a couple of books and exhibited his art alongside the likes of Pablo Picasso and David Shrigley. He spoke at Sunday Assembly London way back in 2014 and is very much looking forward to returning. He is at his best when he does not know what he is doing.

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.

Digital Distractions

• 16th June 2019, 11:00am
• Speaker: Dr Anastasia Dedyukhina
• Performer: Lonan Jenkins

Do you check your email or social media just for a second, and then two hours later find yourself mindlessly clicking on yet another cat video? How about reading something online, and then immediately forgetting what it was about? You are not alone.

This coming Sunday we are so excited to have Dr Anastasia Dedyukhina speaking with us. Anastasia explores, how the internet is changing our brain. Quoting the latest neuroscience research, she explains how digital distractions are preventing us from good decision making and innovative and creative thinking, and will give practical tips on how to coach your brain to stay focused in the age of digital distractions.

Seeing as it’s Father’s Day we also have the wonderful Lonan Jenkins coming to do some father themed story telling for us! AND our very first Sunday Assembly father, Rich Kershaw, doing a Trying My 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.

To Be Right or To Be Liked?

• 1st July 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Gráinne Maguire

Our guest speaker on the 1 July is the amazing comedian and writer Gráinne Maguire. She is fascinated with our need to be right in arguments and conversations, whether it’s with our closest friends or our worst enemies. Come along to wonder more about where in your life you want to be right and where your life, you prefer to be liked!

As a comedy writer, Gráinne has written for Channel 4’s The Last Leg, 8 Out of 10 Cats, The Alternative Election Show and Radio 4’s The News Quiz, The Now Show, Dead Ringers, Ayres On Air and NewsJack.

We’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

When Life Gives you Lemons

• 15th July 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Beth Vyse

Life can be hard. The question is: how can we deal with it?

Our guest speaker on the 15th July knows all about this, she is comedian Beth Vyse. Beth will be bringing an honest and humorous account of her experiences in being diagnosed with breast cancer at 28 and how her ability to laugh at it all, got her through.

Expect a very personal story with some laughs thrown in, as Beth tells us about her journey of endurance and survival. Come along, be inspired and learn ways that can help you to deal with life’s most testing moments.

Beth Vyse is a comedian and actress who started her career at the RSC, Sheffield Crucible, Royal Court, Birmingham Rep and The Soho Theatre. She went on to perform comedy shows with as half of the double act Morris and Vyse. She now performs solo character comedy, and with The Weirdos Collective.

We’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

Summer Specials

• 5th and 19th August 2018, 11:00am

We’ve got something a little different planned for August. We’re taking Sunday Assembly outdoors for some spectacular summer specials. There’ll be singing, picnics, games, ukulele jams and much more. We’ve also got plans in case it rains!

The events on 5 and 19 August will take place in Lincoln’s Inn Fields from 11:00. Our lovely volunteers will be hanging out on the grass opposite the Margaret Edith MacDonald statue with a Sunday Assembly sign and some drinks! We’ll be there even if it’s raining to direct you to the wet weather activities, but we’ll update Twitter first!

It’s Never Too Late

• 2nd September 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Eddie Brockelsby
• Host: Rufus Hound

If you haven’t come along to a Sunday Assembly before, It’s Never Too Late to start now! In fact It’s never too late to start anything new, and this week we have inspirational Iron Gran, Eddie Brockelsby, sharing some of her experiences and reminding us just that!

Eddie was the oldest British women to complete an Ironman Triathalon and founded her company Silverfit to promote lifelong fitness – we are thrilled to have her speaking at this Sunday Assembly!

After a un-sporty youth Eddie herself only started running at the age of 50, and in 2015 at the age of 72, she became the oldest British woman to complete an Ironman Triathlon. Having experienced the benefits of exercise herself she is passionate about raising awareness of the benefits of exercise for the over 45’s. Through her company Silverfit she hopes to help the older population to find a way to take regular exercise that they enjoy, thus reducing the costs of Britain’s ageing population and helping members to live life to the full; independently and happily. In her previous life, the mother of three and grandmother of four was a social worker for 50 years, and she gained her PhD in 2007.

This Sunday Assembly will be hosted by comedian and presenter Rufus Hound and we have Your Friend The Poet doing some poetry for us!

We’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

Learning from Nature

• 16th September 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Michael Pawlyn
• Poet: The Repeat Beat Poet

With the change of season looming, our lives are starting to change gear, slowing down and getting a little more snug as we head into the Autumn months. Nature is changing and let’s learn from that with this week’s theme: LEARNING FROM NATURE.

We are so excited to have Architect Michael Pawlyn come to speak with us about how he uses nature in design. Michael established Exploration Architecture in 2007 to focus on designing high performance buildings and solutions for the circular economy. The company has developed a ground-breaking office project, an ultra-low energy data centre, a zero waste textiles factory and progressive solutions for green cities.

Prior to setting up Exploration Michael Pawlyn worked with Grimshaw for ten years and was central to the team that designed the Eden Project. He is regularly booked as a keynote speaker on innovation and, in 2011, became one of only a small handful of architects to have a talk posted on TED.com. His TED talk has since had over 1.8 million viewings.

The first edition of his book Biomimicry in Architecture has been RIBA Publications’ best-selling title and the second edition was published in October 2016. Michael Pawlyn jointly initiated the widely acclaimed Sahara Forest Project; the latest version of which was opened by the King of Jordan in 2017.

This Sunday Assembly will be hosted by comedian and presenter Rufus Hound and we have the incredible Repeat Beat Poet performing for us.

We’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

Living with our Sun

• 7th October 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Harry Cliff
• Poet: Gecko

We only have a few weeks left this side of daylight savings so lets take some time to focus on that bright star while it’s still with us!

The Sun makes life on Earth possible, but our nearest star is also unpredictable, violent and potentially dangerous. On the 1 September 1859 a huge eruption from the Sun slammed into the Earth, bathing skies across the world in lurid auroral lights and sending sparks flying from electrical equipment. Today, a ‘solar storm’ on that scale could devastate the technology we all rely on, knocking out electricity supplies and satellites for days, weeks or even months. Harry Cliff, the Curator of the Science Museum’s new blockbuster exhibition, The Sun – Living With Our Star, will explore the science of solar storms and the impact they can have on all our lives.

Harry Cliff is a particle physicist who works on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and is a member of the LHCb collaboration, a large international team searching for signs of new particles and forces of nature in high-energy particle collisions. He is the Fellow of Modern Science at the Science Museum in London and curated their “Collider” exhibition as well as the more recent “Einstein’s Legacy”, which explores the scientific and cultural impact of Albert Einstein’s life and work.

This Sunday Assembly will be hosted by our co-founder Sanderson Jones and we have the playful poet Gecko performing for us.

We’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

The Rights of Women

• 21st October 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Jaspreet Kaur

Our next Sunday Assembly will be part of the closing day of the Bloomsbury Festival, with the festival running a programme of rousing talks and vital debates on the subject of ‘The Rights of Women’ all Sunday long!

Named after Bloomsbury resident Mary Wollstonecraft’s famous 1792 paper, Rights of Woman, this Sunday Assembly will be all about celebrating women and asking: Where next?

We are very excited to have the award winning Jaspreet Kaur as our main speaker this week! Better known as Behind the Netra for her poetry, Jaspreet is an award-winning Spoken Word Artist and History teacher from East London focused on sharing her thoughts on gender issues, mental health stigma, historical topics and positive social change. Jaspreet actively works with national government, corporations and charities alike, such as TED, Westminster Interfaith Council and Action for Children, using her poetry to inspire and drive change. This year, Jaspreet had the honour of performing for Her Majesty the Queen and The Royal Family. Jaspreet truly believes that poetry can be used as a powerful tool for positive social.

This Sunday Assembly will be hosted by the wonderful Charlotte Coates and completing our all female line up this week will be Liz Evans who is Trying Her Best!

We’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

Sleep

• 4th November 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Professor Vincent Walsh

What happens to our brain when we sleep? We are so excited to have Professor Vincent Walsh joining us this week, giving us an understanding our sleeping brain and why getting your 8 hours is so vitally important – the perfect Sunday morning lesson!

We are in the midst of an epidemic of insomnia and bad sleep habits that have enormous, negative effects on our lives. Around 37% of our lives are spent sleeping, let’s learn to do it right.

In this talk, Professor Walsh will explain the neuroscience of sleep, why it is even more important than you think it is, how we mess it up, and what we can do about it. He calls it the “low hanging fruit of health and wellbeing.”

In his own research he has worked on sleep and memory, sleep and creativity, sleep and the menopause, sleep and elite athletic performance and sleep and thermoregulation. He is Professor of Human Brain Research at UCL, and Chief Scientific Officer of sleepdeep, an innovative start up in sleepwear technology.

Vincent Walsh is Professor of Human Brain Research at University College London. His primary work has been on methods of using magnetic fields to stimulate the human brain using a technique called TMS, which is now established as a treatment for depression. For the past decade he has focussed on applying his knowledge to the real world and has taken special interests in elite performance (working with football clubs, international rugby and Team GB Rio squads, as well as businesses and the military), creativity (working with concert musicians, artists and business professionals), and sleep (working with sleepdeep, and focussing on sleep and learning, sleep and the menopause, and the role of sleep in learning and creativity).

This Sunday Assembly will be hosted by our co-founder Sanderson Jones.

We’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

Sunday Assembly Lates

• Wednesday 14th November 2018, 7:30pm
• Speakers: Malcolm Stern, Sarah Adefehinti
• Performer: Lonan Jenkins

We are so excited to introduce our second ever Sunday Assembly Lates event this November!

This is an adult only, evening gathering, which is ticketed to raise funds for Sunday Assembly London!

If you sometimes struggle to get up on a Sunday (or know someone who does) and would love to come to a Sunday Assembly where we can talk about things that aren’t suitable for children’s ears, this one is for YOU!

For this Second Edition of SUNDAY ASSEMBLY LATES we have not one but TWO speakers joining us, each are experts on the subject of love, self love and relationships.

This is an adult only, evening gathering, with a glass of wine (if you like), which is ticketed to raise funds for Sunday Assembly London!

The first speaker is psychotherapist, author and presenter Malcolm Stern. Malcolm has worked as a group and individual psychotherapist for more than 20 years. He is co-founder and co-director of Alternatives at St James’ Church in London and runs groups internationally. He is the author of Falling in Love, Staying In Love and he co-presented the Channel 4 series on relationships Made for Each Other in 2003 and 2004.

The second speaker is self love and relationship coach and founder of Loving with the Lights on, Sarah Adefehinti. Sarah believes self-love is an essential prerequisite for loving others and forming healthy and consciously co-created relationships (romantic or otherwise). Her coaching clinic, Loving with the Lights On, offers holistic relationship education for adults.

To mix things up a little more at this assembly we are also very excited to have the incredible Lonan Jenkins from the Embers Collective doing some storytelling for us!

As always, we’ll have our band welcoming you through the doors, some awesome power ballads and all the best Sunday Assembly joy (but at night!).

> £8 EARLY BIRD TICKETS ON SALE NOW <

We will also have a donation based bar so you can enjoy a drink while you listen/ sing/ dance/ sit.

Come have fun while raising some pennies for this fantastic community!

Over 18’s only.

Speak up on Science

• 18th November 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Gemma Milne

This Sunday we are heading deep into the world of science and technology. Have you got opinions on the subject but never felt empowered to voice them? Our speaker this week Gemma Milne is coming to speak on just that. Gemma believes that everyone could and should feel empowered to have a voice and an opinion on the world of tech and science!

Gemma Milne is a science and technology writer and speaker focussing on and the broad cultural issues surrounding their advancements, with a focus on deep tech: biotech, agriculture, energy, space, health, quantum computing, AI. She’s a science startup advisor and Co-Founder of Science: Disrupt, a media org connecting and showcasing those innovators, iconoclasts and entrepreneurs creating change in science.

This Sunday Assembly will be hosted by our co-founder Sanderson Jones.

We’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

Helping Refugees

• 2nd December 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Hasan Akkad
• Poet: Byron Vincent

Incase you’ve forgotten, our Sunday Assembly motto is ‘Live Better, Help Often and Wonder More’

This Sunday we want to really focus our thoughts and focus to ‘Helping More’ – ’tis the giving season after all!

The world is facing a displacement crisis, as a result of violent conflicts and natural disasters. Today, more than 65 million people globally are forcibly displaced, with half of that number being children. We want to learn more about what it’s like to be in that position and wonder, how can we as a community, Help More?

We are SO excited to have the inspiring Hasan Akkad coming to speak with us at this assembly. Hassan Akkad arrived in the UK after 87 days of traveling fleeing his home and job as an English teacher in Damascus, Syria. He will share with us a brief snippet of his story and experience of many refugees fleeing conflict, a story that we hear reports of on the news but that the majority of people have no experience of.

Production company KEO Films provided Hassan and five other refugees with camera phones to record their tumultuous journeys to seek refuge in Europe pieced together in the award winning documentary Exodus: Our Journey to Europe on BBC2.

For both Sunday assemblies in December we are collecting items for SNUG packs for charity, HELP REFUGEES and will be running a food bank for Refugee Community Kitchen:

Bring along warm items to create SNUG packs for Help Refugees (items inc: socks, preferably black/big enough 7-9feet; scarves/snoods; men’s boxer shorts S or M; gloves)

OR

Bring along food items to be donated to Refugee Community Kitchen listed on the document under ‘food’ here: https://helprefugees.org/calais/needs-list/

Want to do more? Help Refugees have a wishlist of priority items here: https://helprefugees.org/calais/needs-list/ and we can happily accept donations of any of these items too.

The Help Often gang will collect at the back of the hall at the end of both December assemblies and will donate in bulk to a driver heading over to Calais close to Christmas.

Thank you in advance for your wonderful generosity. Any Qs or queries get in touch at salondoncommunityaction@gmail.com.

This Sunday Assembly will be hosted by our co-founder Sanderson Jones and we have the amazing poet Bryon Vincent performing for us.

We’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

Giving Joy at Christmas

• 16th December 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Tamsin Blanchard

It’s our last Sunday Assembly London gathering of 2018 and we’re going out in style!

We are so excited to have Tamsin Blanchard speaking with us this weekend! Tamsin is a fashion journalist, author and lecturer – particularly known for her work on ecological issues in fashion and with her work on the wonderful Fashion Revolution project.

Tamsin will be talking to us about the Fashion Revolution project and how we can all make ethical buying choices this Christmas.

Come and join us for a very jolly time, with some of our favourite festive classics for our singalongs and lots of festive jumpers!

For both Sunday assemblies in December we are collecting items for SNUG packs for charity, HELP REFUGEES and will be running a food bank for Refugee Community Kitchen (for specific items only please see the link below if you want to donate food items).

If you are able to, please bring along one or more of the following for Help Refugees:
– Socks, preferably black/big enough 7-9feet
– Scarves/snoods
– Men’s boxer shorts S or M
– Gloves

OR

Bring along food items to be donated to Refugee Community Kitchen listed on the document under ‘food’ here: https://helprefugees.org/calais/needs-list/

>>> Please read the link and only bring donations of food which are listed! <<<

Want to do more? Help Refugees have a wishlist of priority items here: https://helprefugees.org/calais/needs-list/ and we can happily accept donations of any of these items too.

The Help Often gang will collect at the back of the hall at the end of both December assemblies and will donate in bulk to a driver heading over to Calais close to Christmas.

Thank you in advance for your wonderful generosity. Any Qs or queries get in touch at salondoncommunityaction@gmail.com.

This Sunday Assembly will be hosted by our co-founder Sanderson Jones.

We’ll also be doing our usual: Mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing stories from a number of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards.

It’s Our 5th Birthday!

• 7th January 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Rufus Hound

Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to us!

We all know that Sunday Assembly is there to help everyone celebrate life, but this gathering isn’t just a celebration, it’s a party! Bring your party hats and put on your party clothes. Get ready for an all star line up, including Rufus Hound as our speaker, who thought he might be a vicar some years ago, but then became a comedian, actor and all round TV & Radio superstar!

Tying in with our theme of Light in the Darkness, Rufus will be speaking about the role hope in our lives, how faith can provide it and how those without faith can still can embrace it. He told us that his first idea was ‘to cover myself in sparklers and run down The Tube but the so called “Health and Safety” brigade said it was “stupid” to the “point of borderline psychotic”.’
He hopes you enjoy it!

We will be singing some of our favourite power ballads from over the last five years, looking back on how far we (each and every one of us) have come in the last five years and looking into the future (like Mystic Meg but without the crystal ball) and to all the wonder we can bring to the world.

See you there party poppers!

Photos

Imagine a World Where

• 21st January 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: James Turner

James Turner is the founder of a creative collective called Glimpse, which allows creative people to use their skills for good. Instead of talking about the problem, they show a glimpse of a more positive world that’s just out of view. Previous projects include the Citizens Advertising Takeover Service (CATS) and more recently Choose Love, the world’s first store that sells real products for refugees.

He will be talking about what we can learn as individuals from his experience of creating campaigns that make change and why on earth they decided to fill an entire tube station with pictures of cats!

James will speak about why he thinks the key to a positive vision is the idea of imagining a world where we fix these problems rather than just criticising them.

Get ready to be inspired!

As well as this awe inspiring, wonder more talk, we’ll be doing our usual: mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing a story from a member of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards!

We’re excited to see you there!

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.

Embrace The Skin You’re In

• 4th February 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Megan Crabbe
• Poet: Mr Gee
• Trying My Best community speaker: Harri Rose
• Also featuring: The Insecurity Guards

Forget those post-festive diets and come and remember why you and your brilliant body are beautiful, at this inspiring Sunday Assembly!

We are being joined by Megan Crabbe, writer of the bestselling book, Body Positive Power. Megan began having body image issues when she was 5 years old, and her early obsession with losing weight spiralled into anorexia by age 14. She spent 2 years in and out of residential psychiatric units, was hospitalised, and nearly lost her life, until she began recovery at 16. After several more years of hating her body and chasing thinness, she discovered the body positivity movement online, made peace with her body, and started her Instagram page bodyposipanda to spread the body positive message.

She now teaches her 880,000 followers how they can overcome their body image issues as well, has written a bestselling book on body positivity called Body Positive Power, and gives talks on body image in schools and at events across the country. She’s also a full-time carer for her older sister, who has cerebral palsy.

As well as this awe inspiring, wonder more talk, we’ll be doing our usual: mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing a story from a member of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards!

We’re excited to see you there!

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.

Photos

Rolling Towards Change

• 18th February 2018, 11:00am

• Speaker: Amy Oulton

Come and join us for an incredible talk by Amy Oulton.

Amy is a force for good with a sack full of stories which we can’t wait to listen to!

She has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a rare genetic condition that causes weak tissues, joint dislocations, chronic pain and fatigue. Due to this syndrome she has been a wheelchair user for the past ten years. In spite of this, Amy lives an exciting and hugely positive life, travelling the world and recording her journeys with Buzzfeed, working as a graphic designer for a charity and campaigning to change the way society understands disability. Most recently, Amy’s spoken at Tedx Brighton 2017 about societal perceptions of disability.

Amy is coming to speak to us about her life as a disabled person today, including her travels round the world in a wheelchair. Her talk will also be about why disabled people need allies and how you can help push forward social change.

We also have the awesome poet, ‘Your Friend The Poet’ and a member of our community who is telling us about how they’re trying their best! If that’s not enough, we have power ballads dancing out of our fingers and toes and a vat of tea and coffee for after.

See you there you superstars!

The Importance of Being Weird

• 4th March 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Adam Larter

We’re planning to get playful at this brilliant Sunday gathering! We’re being joined by the very silly and very brilliant Adam Larter.

Adam is a comedy performer, writer and director best known for creating and running the Weirdos Comedy Collective who have been making unusual comedy in London for 8 years and have raised thousands for charity with their annual pantomimes. They have sold out Leicester Square with a surreal Harry Potter parody and recently performed a play on ice with comedy hero Tony Law.

He’ll be joining us to talk about why it’s important to be weird. He believes that we can all be weird, that it’s a choice not something you’re born with.
Adam will delve into our imaginations to help us realise how even normal people can be weird and how easy it is to be cool with other people’s weird.
He might do something weird in the speech. But probably not.

So come along and get weird. Or not!

As well as this awe inspiring, wonder more talk, we’ll be doing our usual: mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing a story from a member of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards!

We’re excited to see you there!

‘hey Sunday Assembly! Ive been wanting to come to Assembly for ages now and finally today i made it! i had an absolutely wonderful time. i laughed! felt warm inside! and was so touched. The poet and speaker were fantastic and the ..Marta Pomare…..is trying her best was so powerful, helped me so much, and such a genius concept. WoW! I feel so grateful for this morning! See you again soon and thanks for having me’ Nicky Freedman via Facebook

How To Get A Lemon Into Space

• 18th March 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Vijay Shah

Imagine you have a lemon that you really want to get into space. How do you go about it? How much fuel do you need? Where exactly is Space?

With a lemon for a visual aid, scientist, awesome communicator and space cadet, Vijay Shah will be joining us to answer all these questions and more, leaving us all feeling like rocket scientists as part of British Science Week!

Vijay has spent over three years travelling and on expedition in six of the world’s continents, but there has been one place that has mesmerised him since childhood – that is the vastness of Space.

Humans have barely dipped a toe into the Universe, and so his professional explorations are in the realms of aerospace engineering developing the next generation of aircraft and spacecraft to explore this planet and beyond. Vijay is an aerospace engineer at Reaction Engines Ltd developing hypersonic propulsion systems to revolutionise space access. He has worked in the industry for over 10 years across Europe, pushing the boundaries in the fields of aviation and aerospace. Vijay was on BBC 2 series ‘ASTRONAUTS: Do You Have What It Takes?’ during which twelve candidates endured challenges such as hovering a helicopter, taking their own blood and speaking Russian while in a centrifuge at 5g.

By the end of the Assembly you will have rocketed your feel good factor, with power ballads, spoken word, stories from the community and a big old fun time!

Sunday Assembly Lates: Five Rhyming Lines for Better Sexual Times

• Thursday 22nd March, 7:30pm
• Speaker: Alix Fox

We are so excited to launch our first ever Sunday Assembly Lates fundraiser!

This is an adult only, evening gathering, with a glass of wine (if you like), which is ticketed to raise funds for Sunday Assembly London!

If you sometimes struggle to get up on a Sunday (or know someone who does) and would love to come to a Sunday Assembly where we can talk about things that aren’t suitable for children’s ears, this one is for YOU!

We have the unbelievably brilliant Alix Fox as our speaker, who is going to wow us with “Five Rhyming Lines for Better Sexual Times”. Nope, she’s not going to talk in poetry, but she is going to share a handful of the most important things she’s learnt about loving ourselves, loving others, and having more satisfying, uplifting experiences of sex – presented as snappy, fappy, memorable sayings designed to help you be more mindful of achieving optimally pleasurable, positive, spirit-lifting sauciness.

Alix Fox is a multi award-winning journalist/broadcaster/sex educator. She presents The Guardian’s award-winning sex & relationships real-life storytelling podcast, Close Encounters, which reached #7 in the worldwide iTunes podcast chart, and she is now co-host of a brand new sex comedy show for BBC Radio 1 – Unexpected Fluids, which starts this May. She’s a proud Ambassador for sexual wellbeing charity Brook; was shortlisted as Media Woman of the Future 2017; and wrote a chapter on love in Penguin book Life Lessons From remarkable Women, released March 8th.

Known for her immediately recognisable written voice and non-judgmental, joyous, entertaining yet educational style; ability to put folks from all backgrounds at ease even when discussing tricky themes; and warm, humorous way of connecting to people, Alix certainly raises eyebrows – along with raising spirits, raising the roof, and raising the bar on how we approach human relationships.

And as well as that we’ll have our jazz band welcoming you through the doors, some awesome power ballads and all the best Sunday Assembly joy (but at night!).

Come have fun while raising some pennies for this fantastic community!

Over 18’s only.

The Sound of Science

• 15th April 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Dr Elaine Chew

The links between music and mathematics can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, but how much do we recognise the patterns as we listen to our favourite tunes?

We’re being joined by Dr Elaine Chew, who will be delving into the geometry of musical sounds, and how performers and composers manipulate them to generate or violate expectations. Elaine has been working at the interplay of digital media and music to research how a machine, standing on the shoulders of the composer giants, copies rhythms and aspects of tonal expectation to make refreshing and convincing new music. She has been using this research to then turn to human physiology.

This mesmerising talk will take us on a mystery tour of the heart with Elaine showing us the beauty in the abnormal. She will show us how she takes the rhythms stolen from the electrical activity of abnormal heartbeats to produce natural-sounding music.

How about that for some #wondermore?

As well as this awe inspiring, wonder more talk, we’ll be doing our usual: mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing a story from a member of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards!

We’re excited to see you there!

OK Computer?

• 6th May 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Jonny Brooks-Bartlett
• Host: Rufus Hound

Come and join us for a demystifying gathering all about the sometimes very scary and sometimes mega cool science of artificial intelligence!

We have data scientist, mathematician and all round AI geek, Jonny Brooks-Bartlett joining us. Jonny is passionate about all things AI, science and the history of the people behind the science.

At this gathering he’s going to share his learnings from the University of Oxford as well as through his own experience of writing machine learning algorithms to explain what AI really is and how it works today. He will explore what the vision of AI in the future wis and whether we should all be worried about AI becoming a bit TOO intelligent!

As well as this awe inspiring, wonder more talk, we’ll be doing our usual: mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing a story from a member of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards!

We’re excited to see you there!

Grief

• 20th May 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Cariad Lloyd

How do we grieve for someone? How does it change and evolve as we get older? Cariad Lloyd’s father died when she was 15 leaving her with emotions she had no language for. So, she created Griefcast for herself and other comedians to talk, share and laugh about the weirdness of grieving and death. Each time she talks to a different comedian about their own personal feelings of loss.
What has talking incessantly about death taught her and how similar is the process of grieving for us all?

Come and find out at this grief themed gathering, where we will celebrate this life we have in all it’s brilliance, sadness and laughter.

Cariad is an award-winning comedian, actor, writer and improviser. She has been seen on QI, Have I Got News For You, Toast of London, Murder in Successville, 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown and Peep Show, and is also heard on The News Quiz, The Now Show and The Museum of Curiosity on Radio 4. She is a member of Austentatious: An Improvised Jane Austen Novel, who are currently performing at the Savoy Theatre in the West End and she is the host and creator of Griefcast, a podcast about death with comedians, which is cheerier than it sounds.

As well as this brilliant talk, we’ll be doing our usual: mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing a story from a member of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards!

We’re excited to see you there!

The Bland & The Boundless

• 3rd June 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Ahir Shah

On the 3 June we’re being joined by the amazing Ahir Shah, who is going to explore how the small, boring details can inspire us into the boundless possibilities of the universe! He says:

“A little while ago I was on the Manchester Metrolink and found myself frustratedly turning up the brightness on my phone screen. I was trying to read some article and was annoyed that I couldn’t concentrate properly, because the brightness on my phone was losing in a battle against the sun.

This will be a talk about technology, nature, mental health and the human animal in a hyperconnected world.”

Ahir a stand-up comedian and writer. His most recent live show, Control, was nominated for Best Show at the 2017 Edinburgh Comedy Awards and he’s recently completed a national tour including three weeks at the Soho Theatre in London. He is currently working on a new stand-up show called Duffer, about life and what comes after, death and what comes before, and Bohemian Rhapsody.

As well as this funny and inspiring, wonder more talk, we’ll be doing our usual: mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing a story from a member of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards!

We’re excited to see you there!

Does it Help to Help?

• 17th June 2018, 11:00am
• Speaker: Dr Pritpal S Tamber

One of our founding principles is to Help Often, but we have a speaker coming to question that idea and talk about another way forward!

Dr Pritpal S Tamber has been researching communities and health, looking at what is needed for people to be well and has found that social circumstances, from economic opportunity to access to fresh food might not be the main factor on health after all. He says that “over the last five and a half years, I have come to understand what really matters and how ‘help’ may be the last thing that anyone needs”. He’ll explore how if individuals and communities do not have ‘agency’ – the ability to make purposeful decisions – then everything else is harder.

Come and be wowed by this incredible speaker, researcher and #wondermore superstar. Pritpal is the CEO and Co-Founder of Bridging Health & Community, a nonprofit in the US seeking to transform how health care works with communities, and the Founder of Beyond Systems, a UK-based project seeking to nurture the field of practice that is based on parity, trust and an equal voice for all.

He is the former Physician Editor of TEDMED, TED’s dedicated health event. It was in that role he realised that the potential in ‘innovation’ in health was dwarfed by the size of problems, especially in communities in difficult social circumstances.

We’ll also be doing our usual: mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing a story from a member of our community, drinking a vat of tea afterwards and saying goodbye to our Community Creator, Ruth!

We’re excited to see you there!

‘Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to us!

We all know that Sunday Assembly London is there to help everyone celebrate life, but this gathering isn’t just a celebration, it’s a party! Bring your party hats and put on your party clothes. Get ready for an all star line up, including Rufus Hound as our speaker, who thought he might be a vicar some years ago, but then became a comedian, actor and all round TV & radio superstar!’

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.

Rufus told us that his first idea was ‘to cover myself in sparklers and run down The Tube but the so called “Health and Safety” brigade said it was “stupid” to the “point of borderline psychotic”.’

We sang some of our favourite power ballads from over the last five years, looked back on how far we (each and every one of us) have come in the last five years and looked into the future (like Mystic Meg but without the crystal ball) and to all the wonder we can bring to the world.

Photos

Saying Yes to Life

• 2nd July 2017, 11:00am
• Guest speaker: Dave Cornthwaite

Are you ready for this?

It may be the most positive Sunday Assembly that ever there could be.

We are being joined by YesTribe founder, Dave Cornthwaite for a Sunday Assembly to get you in the mood for summer!

Since quitting a job as a terrible graphic designer (his words, not ours!) in 2005, Dave has developed a successful career based around his passions. He’s an expert in adventure, non-motorised travel, audacity and creating work that you love.

Dave is a record-breaking adventurer twelve journeys into his groundbreaking Expedition1000 project: 25 journeys of 1000 miles or more, each using a different form of non-motorised transport.

Amongst his adventures are record breaking SUP journeys along the Mississippi and around Martinique, longboarding across Australia, swimming 1001 miles and co-founding the groundbreaking growth mindset projects, Exploring Mindset and Winter Quest. On top of that he’s written three books: the bestselling Life in the Slow Lane, a hapless search for love in Date, and BoardFree, the story of how he left his job to skateboard further than anyone ever had.

In between adventures Dave is committed to enabling others to reach their own potential through social journeys, workshops, group expeditions and mindset-shaping projects. In 2015 his motto, SayYesMore, transformed into a different beast when he accidentally founded a social enterprise the same name and a community of doers called The YesTribe, which offers a gentle solution to the mental health pressures of today’s society.

In between adventures he also leads The YesTribe, a community of doers dedicated to redesigning life for the better. He blogs and speaks about adventure, living life on our own terms and maximising efficiency of choice in order to to magnify the positive impact of our work and lifestyle. If his enthusiasm for simple living, the power of adventure for good and the glorious pursuit of enjoying Mondays isn’t enough to get you ready for a new challenge, as well as some power ballad singing and being with 400 other brilliant humans, we don’t know what will!

BSL interpretation will be provided.

We can’t wait to see you there and have fun celebrating life with you all!

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. 

Feeling Like A Fraud: How To Overcome Imposter Syndrome

• 16th July 2017, 11:00am
• Guest speaker: Jenny Garrett

So many of us have felt it.

‘There must have been a mistake’.
‘They’ll find out that I’m not the right person soon’.
‘Everyone else is much more qualified than me’.
‘Someone will realise I’m a fraud soon enough’.

Imposter Syndrome and feeling like a fraud are such common things, whether in education, at work or in our friendships and communities.

We are being joined by Award Winning Coach, Speaker and Author, Jenny Garrett for an interactive talk. She will introduce us to the concept of imposter syndrome and look at what it really means. She aims to help us begin to uncover what our drives are, and learn how to identify, challenge and replace unhelpful thoughts and beliefs. She uses her years of experience in coaching and leadership to inspire and motivate people, working with them to deliver career and life changing results beyond expectation.

And if that’s not enough, we’ll be singing our hearts out, hearing stories from members of the community, drinking a vat of tea/coffee and eating a heck of a lot of biscuits afterwards too.

BSL interpretation will be provided.

We can’t wait to see you there and have fun celebrating life with you all!

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.

Start Up Or Start Down?

• 6th August 2017, 11:00am
• Guest speaker: Richard Ashcroft

It’s summer!

Which means it’s much easier to get up in the morning, come to a Sunday Assembly, feel brilliant about the world and step into the rest of your Sunday with joy.

That and you’ll be a little bit smarter because we’ll have Richard Ashcroft, Professor of Bioethics in the School of Law at Queen Mary University of London, where he teaches medical law, bioethics, and human rights as our main speaker.

He’s going to talk about “disruptive innovation”, why some people are so keen on it and what it means for human imagination and human dignity.

Put more simply, he will talk about why ethics matters in innovation and why it is hard to innovate ethically. He will argue that innovation should be tied to hopes for humanity, not simply schemes for “getting rich quick”.

Richard has been teaching in medical schools and law schools in the UK for just over 20 years now, and has published widely in the fields of research ethics, ethical aspects of public health and health promotion, and issues in genetics. At the moment he’s writing a book about utopias and biotechnology. FANCY!

As well as this mind bending talk, we’ll be singing our hearts out, hearing stories from members of the community, drinking a vat of tea/coffee and eating a heck of a lot of biscuits afterwards too.

BSL interpretation will be provided.

We can’t wait to see you there and have fun celebrating life with you all!

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.

WTF! (What The Fly?)

• 20th August 2017, 11:00am
• Guest speaker: Colin McClure

The very incredible Colin McClure is our speaker this week. You might see him greeting you on the door most weeks, but he’s also got a PhD in Flies!

As a Biologist, he is passionate about how mother nature navigates the problems and limitations of life. To do this, he works with one of its most wonderful solutions, the humble fruit fly.

But why do researchers work with them?

Can they teach us anything?

Why should we care?

In all, WTF? (What, the fly?)

On our journey, he’ll be weaving in and out of the diverse planes of biology which flies have illuminated; from sleep to sex, from dinner to disease, from genes to gender. If you had any doubts about how great flies were, Colin is going to give you a glimpse into their beauty and complexity, and how understanding just a little bit of their biology can give us an immense appreciation and wonder to how unique, capable and amazing we are as human beings.

And if that’s not enough, we’ll be singing our hearts out, hearing stories from members of the community, drinking a vat of tea/coffee and eating a heck of a lot of biscuits afterwards too.

BSL interpretation will be provided.

We can’t wait to see you there and have fun celebrating life with you all!

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. 

Too Sensitive For Science?

• 3rd September 2017, 11:00am
• Guest speaker: Dr Emily Grossman

This is the first of our three part Equality Season.

Dr Emily Grossman is an expert in molecular biology and genetics, with a Double First from Cambridge and a PhD in cancer research.

In June 2015 she took part in a debate on Sky News following Sir Tim Hunt’s comments on women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). One of the points she made was that it’s OK for female scientists to cry. Following the interview she received a torrent of sexist and misogynistic abuse on social media. She is coming to tell us about her experience, her knowledge and her response.

Emily will be talking about the need to get rid of the super outdated stereotype that all scientists are cold, unemotional…and male. A stereotype that prevents many young people, especially girls, from seeing a place for themselves in science. She will explore the value of emotions in science and in society, in both men and in women, and tell us how emotional openness can lead to three Cs; Compassion, Collaboration and Creativity – qualities that are as essential in science as they are in life.

And if that’s not enough, we’ll be singing our hearts out, hearing stories from members of the community, drinking a vat of tea/coffee and eating a heck of a lot of biscuits afterwards too.

BSL interpretation will be provided.

We can’t wait to see you there and have fun celebrating life with you all!

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.

How Racist is the UK?

• 17th September 2017, 11:00am
• Guest speaker: Camille Barton

Part Two of Our Three Part Equality Season

With recent global elections and racial conflicts in communities, it is clear that xenophobia and racism remain current issues that need to be addressed. However, we’re so often unaware of how racism functions in contemporary British society or how to uproot it in our daily lives.

We are being joined by Camille Barton, who will explore the idea that racism is worst in countries such as the USA. She will speak about how this may also be a source of apathy and confusion when navigating these issues in a UK context. This talk will explore strategies to dismantle racism with a compassionate approach, utilising examples from Camille’s time living and engaging in social justice work in the USA and the UK.

Camille Barton is a movement artist, diversity consultant, producer and the founding director of The Collective Liberation Project, an organisation that designs experiential workshops to teach people about oppression and equip them with the tools to transform racist and sexist behaviour. Camille has worked with clients including Sisters Uncut and SOAS.

Having studied International Relations at The University of Sussex, Camille understands global power dynamics but is most passionate about how the fusion of art and politics can lead to social change. While living in The USA she was inspired by training in restorative justice and peer counselling which supported her work as a youth worker in West Oakland. Improvisation, prefigurative politics and Afrofuturism are at the core of Camille’s art practice.

Prior to establishing The Collective Liberation Project in 2016, Camille worked in Arts and event production for over five years. She production managed projects at a range of events and festivals including Burning Man, Glastonbury, Nowhere, Boomtown Fair and Symbiosis. In 2016 Camille co-produced The Sisterhood, Glastonbury festival’s first women only venue, and incorporated a strong focus on intersectionality and providing a platform for women of colour.

And if that’s not enough, we’ll be singing our hearts out, hearing stories from members of the community, drinking a vat of tea/coffee and eating a heck of a lot of biscuits afterwards too.

BSL interpretation will be provided.

We can’t wait to see you there and have fun celebrating life with you all!

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.

Gendered Intelligence

• 1st October 2017, 11:00am
• Guest speaker: Dr Jay Stewart

What is gender? How do you know someone’s gender? What about those who feel or express their gender in ways that go against social norms?

Who are trans people? And what does it mean to value and celebrate gender diversity in our society?

These are the questions Dr Jay Stewart, CEO and co-founder of Gendered Intelligence, will pose.

For the 1 October, we are partnering with Gendered Intelligence, a not for profit organisation aiming to increase understandings of gender diversity and improving the quality of lives of trans people, and young trans people in particular.

He will offer some insight and tools to get us thinking about how the wider context for trans identities – how sex, gender and sexual orientation interact, explore some key terms and begin to explore how each community, group or organisation can ensure it is inclusive of trans people.

This is the third of three parts in our Equality Season.

And if that’s not enough, we’ll be singing our hearts out, hearing stories from members of the community, drinking a vat of tea/coffee and eating a heck of a lot of biscuits afterwards too.

BSL interpretation will be provided.

We can’t wait to see you there and have fun celebrating life with you all!

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.

Start Thinking Like A Toddler

• 15th October 2017, 11:00am
• Guest speaker: Paul Lindley

Oh hello you big kid!

Have you almost forgotten how to think like a child? This talk, from the pretty flipping impressive Paul Lindley will show us that the key to unlocking our personal potential is not by learning new skills, but by rediscovering old ones, ones we all had when we were toddlers. Paul will invite us to grow down and as we do so he’ll open up the world of imagination, free thinking and self confidence that was once the way we rolled.

His talk will remind us that it’s not the big and powerful who should inspire us, but the small and young – those uncorrupted by convention and routine. In thinking like a toddler again, we can find those little wins, small things that end up making big differences to our lives.

Paul Lindley is an award winning British entrepreneur, social campaigner and best-selling author. In 2006 he founded Ella’s Kitchen, an innovative brand of organic baby food built on a core social mission. It’s now the UK’s largest and has sales of over $100M from across 40 countries. In 2014 he co-founded The Key is E, supporting African entrepreneurs whose social businesses benefit children. If you’re not already feeling a bit like this guy might have done enough, this year he published his first book: ‘Little Wins: The Huge Power of Thinking Like a Toddler’.

As well as all of that he is a trustee of Sesame Workshop, creators of Sesame Street who help kids be smarter, stronger and kinder. And a director of Bite the Ballot, who seek to ensure young people have a voice in society, and advises social enterprise Toast Ale, and Robert F Kennedy Human Rights in the UK. Paul believes the best businesses make profits AND have a core purpose to do social good.

And on top of this great talk we’ll be doing our usual: mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing a story from a member of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards!

We’re excited to see you there!

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.

Stuff School Never Taught YOu

• 5th November 2017, 11:00am
• Guest speaker: Tom Ravenscroft
• Poet: Hussain Manawer

What didn’t you learn at school?

How to do project management? How to present a budget? How to deal with a horrible manager? All the things we just don’t know about!

We are being joined by Tom Ravenscroft from Enabling Enterprise who was a teacher before he found that teaching the syllabus wasn’t enough. He believes that there is something fundamental missing in education, that knowledge and good grades are not enough.

He says:
‘All of us, whatever we do, need some essential skills which go beyond the academic – to work with others, to manage ourselves, to communicate effectively, and to creatively solve problems. We draw on them as much as numeracy or literacy. So why, as an education system, don’t we value these skills even as employers, universities and entrepreneurs cry out for them?’

Tom will be reflecting on a decade of building these skills through an award-winning social enterprise with over 150,000 children and young people to ask this critical question and more: Why are we so quick to presume these skills are innate, or just picked up along the way? How are they really built and how can we use this knowledge as teachers, parents, or even in our own lives?

He’ll also look at how with us facing a future of automation, when these skills are going to be paramount, what would it take to ensure that everyone mastered them?

Tom Ravenscroft founded Enabling Enterprise in 2009, whilst a business and economics teacher in Hackney in East London. The social enterprise is driven to ensure that children and young people of all backgrounds develop the essential skills they need to be successful, alongside good qualifications. Now a national organisation, Enabling Enerprise worked with over 85,000 students in the last year, in partnership with over 130 top employers from NHS hospitals to airports to accountants.

And on top of this great talk we’ll be doing our usual: mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing a story from a member of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards!

We’re excited to see you there!

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.

Imagining The Invisible

• 19th November 2017, 11:00am
• Guest speaker: Yolanda Ohene

How has our perception of the universe and our place in it shifted as scientists have created ways to image what has never been seen before?

From snapshots of the entire universe to microscopic molecules, our awesome speaker, Yolanda Ohene, is going to take us on a visual voyage. Using beautiful, iconic and outstanding images, she will explain the science behind them and ask: what really is the art of science that has made imaging the invisible possible and shaped our imagination?

Flipping heck! We’re excited for this one and to have Yolanda with us! Her research focuses on the development of new MRI techniques to better understand neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s Disease. Alongside her research, Yolanda is an avid science communicator being a BBC BAME Expert Voice, presenting at events, science festivals and schools.

As well as this awe inspiring, wonder more talk, we’ll be doing our usual: mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing a story from a member of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards!

We’re excited to see you there!

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.

Out With The Old

• 3rd December 2017, 11:00am
• Guest speaker: Tiu de Haan

For our penultimate gathering of 2017, we are being joined by ritual designer, Tiu de Haan. She is going to give us a rough guide to ritual making and how to make the most of your moments, big and small, that made up your 2017.

As well as learning the basic art of ritual design, she will give us the tools and techniques to create our very own rituals for completion and celebration, letting go of what has happened and welcoming in what is to come.

Tiu is going to guide us through creating our own ritual for letting go of this year and looking into the new!

She says:

“Our lives are made up of moments, meaningful or mundane – but moment after moment make up our days. The thing is, often as not, they pass by in a blur, as we race through our days, weeks and months, hurrying through our to do list, barely pausing for long enough to catch our breath and notice our journey as we fly on by our lives.”

So come and learn to make a homemade ritual for you can carry out when you’ve got the time and space to reflect, release and reboot for the new year ahead!

Tiu De Haan creates moments of meaning and magic, designing experiences that connect us to our creativity, to each other, to ourselves and to the possibility of wonder.
She is an Oxford educated ritual designer, creative facilitator, voiceover artist and singer, working with people of all values and beliefs to help them to celebrate the transitions of love, life and death. As a creative facilitator, she reminds individuals and organisations how to play, get creative and shift their perspective so that they see the world afresh, as well as working with organisations to bring ritual design into culture change.

As well as this awe inspiring, wonder more talk, we’ll be doing our usual: mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing a story from a member of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards!

We’re excited to see you there!

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. 

The Science of Santa

• 17th December 2017, 11:00am
• Guest speaker: Russell Arnott

It’s our last Sunday Assembly London gathering of the year and we’re going out in style!

We are welcoming back one of our favourite speakers, Russell Arnott (Plankton talk & Octopus talk).

As well as being a marine biologist and an incredible science communicator, Russell Arnott has been working on a very important project. He has been working out how to help us understand just how it is that Santa can deliver all of those presents in time.

He might also accidentally instigate Sunday Assembly’s first indoor snowball fight. All in the name of science!

Come and join us for a very jolly time, with some of our favourite festive classics for our singalongs and lots of festive jumpers!

As well as this awe inspiring, wonder more talk, we’ll be doing our usual: mass singalongs to some of our favourite power ballads, an awesome spoken word artist, hearing a story from a member of our community and drinking a vat of tea afterwards!

We’re excited to see you there!

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.