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In honour of our 13th birthday, join us for a look back at how we’ve marked some of our birthdays gone by.

We’ve included links to our event pages, photos and livestream recordings.

2013: Beginnings

Sunday 6th January 2013 was when it all started. Almost 200 people turned up at The Nave on St. Paul’s Road in Islington for a get-together that promised to ‘solace worries, provoke kindness and inject a bit more whizziness into the everyday.’

Our first speaker, children’s author Andy Stanton, told us how his first book took almost a decade of dropping out and dead end jobs to write.

As you can see from the artwork, we called ourselves The Sunday Assembly back then. Little did our co-founders Pippa Evans and Sanderson Jones realise how that ‘The’ would be overtaken, with hundreds of assemblies to follow and dozens of Sunday Assembly communities in the UK & internationally!

2014: One year and counting
Our guest speaker was Alom Shaha: science teacher, writer and film-maker.

2016: There was a cake…
Shown here with our co-founders Pippa and Sanderson.

2018: There were many cakes!
There’s a photo of them at the top of the page.

Our 5th birthday speaker was Rufus Hound. Tying in with our theme of Light in the Darkness, Rufus spoke about the role of hope in our lives, how faith can provide it and how those without faith can still can embrace it.

2020: Change of Heart
Conservationist Margot Raggett helped us explore how we can make changes for the better, both in our personal lives and in the world around us. Comedic singer/songwriter Gecko returned to entertain us.

2021: Improv your Year
Our 8th birthday speaker was none other than Sunday Assembly London co-founder Pippa Evans. Pippa explained how life is one big improvisation and all of our interactions with the world are made of quick decisions based on what’s available to us.

We couldn’t celebrate this birthday in person, but the good news is that because we were using Zoom and YouTube, we recorded it! Watch the recording here

2022: It’s My Party and I’ll Dry if I Want To
A hybrid assembly. Our guest speaker was Laura Willoughby, co-founder of Club Soda. Laura taught us all about ‘mindful drinking’, and how we can empower ourselves to make conscious decisions about our alcohol consumption. Gecko performed for us again too.

Those of us who gathered in Conway Hall had a birthday lunch in Nando’s afterwards.

2023: Into double figures!

2024: Send in the Clowns
Embracing the playfulness that none of us should lose as we age, our guests were clown Afa Simpson and poet Paul Matthews.

2026: 13 and we feel lucky!
Fast-forward to our first teenage birthday and we kept up our recipe for success with a speaker from our community (Hanna Finn on everyday creativity), plenty of singing and generous helpings of tea and homemade cake, followed by a local lunch and a trip to the pub.

Thank you to everyone who’s celebrated our birthdays with us and the many assemblies in between. You’ve helped to build an in-person community and that’s no small thing. Here’s to another year of Living Better, Helping Often and Wondering More.

We meet at the Backyard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green at 11am on the first & third Sundays of the month (most months). You can arrive any time from 10:30am with no need to book and no pressure to pay (though donations are very welcome).

If you’re looking for learning, laughter and a little less loneliness in London, we can’t wait to welcome you in 2026. We were all Sunday Assembly London first-timers once, and we know how daunting it can be – but once you’ve taken that step through our doors, the rest is a piece of cake!

Community was the theme of Mental Health Awareness Week this year. As it came to a close on 18th May, we asked our attendees and volunteers to tell us how the Sunday Assembly London community has impacted them and their wellbeing.

To do this, we invited everyone to ‘leaf us a message’ by writing anonymously on a leaf and add it to our tree.

It was lovely to look through the leaves and see Sunday Assembly London’s deep, continuing impact. Here’s a selection:

The leaves transcribed:

‘SA is amazing for making friends and having fun’

‘SA enables me to be brave and venture away from the familiar shallows, knowing that if the waves are too big or the waves become too strong, there’s a lighthouse there to guide me home’

‘Singing together makes me feel part of something bigger than myself and puts life’s problems in perspective’

‘Making really wonderful friends’

‘First time attendee of Sunday Assembly and I loved the singing. It has been some time since I sung in a group so that was undoubtedly good for my mental health’

‘As a parent, it’s helpful to be able to talk to adults about something other than children but without needing a babysitter’

‘Met lots of wonderful humans over the years’

‘SAL has given me a place to go in Sundays so I don’t spend the day doing nothing’

‘A constant in my life through many twists and turns’

‘Purpose and friendship’

‘People at Sunday Assembly are open to vulnerable conversations and welcome deep discussion as well as much needed laughter. A very positive impact on my mental health’

These messages made us even prouder of our community members, and of those whose contributions have enabled us to sustain Sunday Assembly London since our first assembly in 2013.

Reflecting on our community and volunteers

Learning. Singing. Listening. Chatting. Laughing. Reflecting. Tea-drinking. Lunching. Donating. Volunteering. These are the things that have been making Sunday Assembly London a community for over 12 years.

To everyone who’s been part of our goals to Live Better, Help Often and Wonder More together: thank you.

And in honour of Volunteers’ Week 2025 (2nd-8th June), a word about our volunteers:

Sunday Assembly London is a volunteer-led charity. No single post could do justice to the amount of time, energy and love that our volunteer teams pool to make every assembly happen. Without volunteering, Sunday Assembly London wouldn’t be the thriving, welcoming community we are today. Without volunteering, Sunday Assembly London wouldn’t be. Thank you to all of you (all of us)!

To anyone who hasn’t discovered us yet, we’re waiting to welcome you to our secular get-togethers in East London! Explore our website to see when your next opportunity is and who our guest speaker will be. (Our song choices remain a closely guarded secret until the assembly itself, but guesses based on the theme of the talk are welcome!)

No need to book, no pressure to pay: just turn up and make a donation if you have a good time.

At Sunday Assembly on 2 March (Everyday Jews), we reintroduced This Much I Know: a segment where we hear from a member of the Sunday Assembly community on a topic close to their heart.

David Goldstein explained why he started coming to Sunday Assembly and shared some good news involving a grant application.

Here’s an abridged version of David’s speech.

“I heard about Sunday Assembly in 2013, its first year. I immediately liked the idea. Then I started coming along… 10 years later. 

So what spurred me into coming?

2023 was the year I really started thinking that I needed something more in the structure of my life, other than family and work. There was a musical that came out that year called Subspace Rhapsody, and I was particularly struck by the song How Would That Feel, which includes the line, “It might be time to change my paradigm.” 

And then came the events of the 7th of October, which left a lot of us feeling vulnerable in a way we hadn’t before. 

Sunday Assembly popped back into my mind, and I thought, “Here’s a community where I can hear voices other than my own – singing voice included – and I’ve got more to gain by walking through those doors than I have to lose.” 

The fact that I’ve kept coming to Sunday Assembly is a testament to how welcoming everyone’s been, and I reached the point where I wanted to give something back, so I’ve done two things. 

One was to offer some ideas about Sunday Assembly’s marketing, and I’ve ended up joining the crew of marketing volunteers. 

As for the other thing… Marketing’s also my day job. I’m the copywriter at an accountancy firm called BKL, which has a charitable foundation called The BKL Foundation, which allocates a percentage of BKL’s profits to good causes. The trustees are BKL employees but it operates independently of BKL. I decided to request a grant for Sunday Assembly. So I wrote an email to the Foundation explaining why Sunday Assembly was a worthy cause that fitted their criteria.  

And at their February meeting, The BKL Foundation trustees decided to award Sunday Assembly a grant… of £,5000! 

Thank you to The BKL Foundation, and to all of you as Sunday Assemblers for being part of something that’s worth every penny of that grant.

The thing to do now is to keep going. Make sure that if BKL check back in six months, a year, to see how it’s going, we can show them how we’ve built on that grant. You’re all part of Sunday Assembly’s marketing. So please, forward the Sunday Assembly newsletters, share the social media posts, do your own posts tagging Sunday Assembly, and keep telling people about us. Just tell them not to wait 10 years before they give it a try. 

I thought about signing off today with ‘Kind regards’, but no one has ever said “Kind regards” in an actual conversation, except for the King. It’s documented: 9th of March 2021. So Instead I’ll end with the sign-off that the future Queen Mother used in 1941: 

‘Tinkety-tonk, old fruit, and down with the Nazis.’”

From the Sunday Assembly trustees…

Sunday Assembly London wishes to sincerely thank The BKL Foundation for its very generous grant of £5,000. This vital financial support will help Sunday Assembly London to continue offering community engagement, and connection through our inclusive, secular gatherings.

With this funding we can expand our programmes, enhance our events, and reach even more people with our core values: Live Better, Help Often and Wonder More.

Here’s David’s photo of Karen, our treasurer, meeting The BKL Foundation chair and some of their trustees at BKL’s North London office.

Left-right: Tyler, Karen, Roze, Ellie, Ian