What’s On

Our guest speaker: Adam Taffler

Desires often get a bad press. From religion to popular culture, they’re painted as dangerous and uncontrollable forces to be suppressed or ignored.

Yet our desires are really messengers of what matters most. A healthy relationship with our needs and wants is vital – it’s the foundation of personal autonomy, authentic relationships, and our own sacred unfolding.

For our Valentine’s Special, we were thrilled to welcome Adam Taffler, a facilitator and authentic communication coach, to help us all understand how to better articulate what we need and want in our relationships. Adam’s mission is making human connection a higher priority in culture. Known for founding the Togetherness movement and creating Shhh Dating (a silent speed dating experience), he designs spaces where genuine connection flourishes.

Adam Taffler’s website

Our guest poet: Michael McKimm

We were also excited to have some spoken word from Michael McKimm, an East London-based poet, originally from Ireland. His most recent book Because We Could Not Dance At The Wedding is about love in a long-term gay relationship and finding joy in an uncertain world.

Michael McKimm’s website

Our four songs

Courtesy of the Sunday Assembly band, we sang four songs with the theme of wanting:

– You’re The One That I Want – John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John
– Don’t You Want Me – Human League
– We Can Work It Out – The Beatles
– Wannabe – Spice Girls (cunningly disguised as Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana)

Notices

Topics of our notices included:

– Our Book Swap table (where swapping is not compulsory)
– An invitation to volunteer at the Mile End parkrun on 16 March
– Our sister assembly in Reading, The Sunday Alternative
– Our next Article Club on 20th February – details here
– Our first ever comedy fundraiser, bringing four fantastic comedians to you on 10th April – details here

As always, we followed the assembly with tea, biscuits and chat at the Backyard Comedy Club, Lunch Club (at Nando’s) and drinks & games at The Three Colts.

Thanks to our host Stuart, co-host Alan, all our wonderful volunteers and everyone who filled the room with singing, laughter and appreciation – especially our first-timers!

→ Our next assembly: Everyday Jews, 2 March
← Our previous assembly: Men’s Sheds: Craft, Connection and Community, 2 February

In 1999, in a rural area of Australia, a woman noticed that many of the local retired miners and Vietnam veterans, really missed working with others. A workshop was put together where people could make and mend items often for themselves but also for the community. Others followed that lead. How did it start here? And why is it spreading?

Today we are joined by Founder and Life President of UKMSA, Mike Jenn, who has worked in practical social innovations for 50 years across community education (under-fives, truanting teenagers, families), and relieving deprivation ( crisis, homelessness, unemployment) and then he ‘retired’ to start something new.

In 2014, Professor Barry Golding coined the term “”shedagogy”” to describe “a distinctive, new way of acknowledging, describing and addressing the way some men prefer to learn informally in shed-like spaces mainly with other men”

January is Mental Wellness Month, a time to promote awareness and understanding of our challenges around mental health, as the numbers of people needing support continues to rise in the UK. For any of us who have spent time in hospitals know, they are often the least uplifting of places. Harshly lit, clinical, noisy and sparsely decorated, many hospital spaces seem at odds with a sense of care or healing, beneficial to both patients and staff.

It was a recognition of this grim state of affairs that led to the foundation of Hospital Rooms, the UK arts and mental health charity, which aims to bring creativity, colour, and kindness to mental health hospitals and transform them into places of hope, dignity, and recovery for all. Today, co-founder Tim Shaw will be with us to talk about their collaborations with artists, service users, and the NHS, to craft innovative artwork and creative programmes while dispelling stigmas and advocating for culture and creativity in mental health as a universal human right. Hospital Rooms has worked with artists such as Richard Wentworth, Anish Kapoor and Sonia Boyce and were awarded Quality Improvement Project of the Year 2018 by NAPICU.

We also welcome Rachel Lewis, a poet and creative facilitator interested in hidden pain, everyday joy and love beyond romance. Her first pamphlet on eating disorder recovery, ‘Three degrees of separation’, was published by Wordsmith HQ.

Happy 12th birthday Sunday Assembly! And Happy New Yeeaaarr!

Along with the requisite fireworks, bubbles and the dash for snogs at midnight, the idea of New Year also brings forth the pressure of ‘New Year’s Resolutions’.

Whether it’s to lose that last ten pounds, quit smoking or finally take up the Cha Cha, more and more people are realising that the conventional idea of ‘New Year’s Resolutions’, are all based on external measures, and can actually be harmful to our wellbeing. Even when they are about health and fitness, the underlying purpose tends to be for something outside of ourselves, putting us under pressure to be ‘better’.

Following a 16 year career in social work, Tamu Thomas is now a leading somatic specialist, leadership coach, author and workshop facilitator with a specialism in combating ‘toxic productivity’. In this talk she invites us all to consider resolutions that make us feel vibrant and alive rather than as a covert means to fix ourselves. Living more sumptuously is about feeling full, satiated, satisfied, and Tamu believes that when we each do this individual work, we collectively benefit from a more positive, productive, and purposeful culture.

In August 2024, environmentalist and barrister, Paul Powlesland made history, by becoming the first member of a UK jury to swear an oath on a river – his beloved River Roding, where he both lives and spends time restoring. A co-founder of the River Roding Trust, Paul has also worked with locals to plant hundreds of trees, remove over a thousand bags of rubbish and hoist precisely 75 shopping trolleys from the Roding’s clay-thick riverbed.

We are thrilled to welcome Paul to Sunday Assembly today to share his journey as well some of his wisdom on the things that we can all do to be better stewards to the natural world. Paul is also co-founder of Lawyers for Nature, an advocacy group calling for the UK to grant rivers a legal right of protection.

We are also excited to have some spoken word from Esme Fay Finch, a poet, children’s author and forest school teacher, who’s project ‘Ways of the Wild’, inspires and educates children about environmental matters through storytelling, art workshops and dance.

There will also be four fantastic songs performed by our very own Sunday Assembly Band, so bring your best singing voices and dancing shoes! Doors open at 10.30am for an 11am start – please bring your re-usable cups to enjoy tea, coffee, and chats with members of our community.

Sunday Assembly is your regular and reliable stop for a welcoming, accessible and inspiring Sunday community, where you can hear talks, poetry, share your stories and make new friends. Please stay after for tea, biscuits, and engaging conversations with members of our community. Our assemblies are free to attend, but we kindly request that you support us so we can continue to keep it open to those who cannot afford to contribute.