Main Events

Happy New Year, and happy 8th birthday to Sunday Assembly!

In honour of this special occasion, we invited Olivier award-winning comedian and Sunday Assembly co-founder Pippa Evans to be our main speaker! Pippa has been very productive during the pandemic, performing with the Showstoppers and translating her acclaimed self-improvement course “Improv Your Life” into book form. She realised that 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.

Pippa taught us some of the skills she has learned as an improv comedian and how they can be applied to every ‘scene’ in our lives.

Hosted by co-founder of Sunday Assembly and founder of The Lifefulness Project Sanderson Jones, this assembly also had poetry by Dan Simpson (@dansimpsonpoet), a member of the community talking about how they’re “Trying Their Best”, and fun sing-along songs by the Sunday Assembly Band.

Because of the current government restrictions, we cannot meet at Conway Hall in Holborn, so our meeting was held on Zoom instead and livestreamed to YouTube.

Watch the recording

Happy 7th Birthday, Sunday Assembly! For our first assembly of the year, we will gather to learn how we can make changes for the better, both in our personal lives and in the world around us.

Our main speaker, Margot Raggett, lived the corporate lifestyle in London for 20 years before undertaking a total change of direction at the age of 40. Seeing a poached elephant changed her life forever and set her off on a path to become one of the world’s most successful conservation book publishers. Margot will share that journey during her talk and why having a purpose has given her more satisfaction than climbing the career ladder ever did.

We welcome the return of comedic singer/songwriter Gecko! His album, Volcano, is available on Spotify.

We’ll sing some epic pop tunes together with our live band and hear from the chair of our board, Sarah Morgan, about Sunday Assembly’s plans for 2020 and beyond. And we’ll end by drinking a vat of tea, eating birthday cake, and talking with friends new and old.

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.

‘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

Can you believe it?

Sunday Assembly is 4 years old and we’re going to party in style! Bring your party hats, put on your Sunday best and let’s get ready to celebrate us celebrating life as a community for all this time!

As well as having a party, we’re going to hear from one of our favourite speakers of all time, Shamash Alidina. He wowed us at the Conference Called Wonder and we’re so excited to have him at Sunday Assembly London. Shamash is speaking on kindfulness: a meditation and way of living that’s relaxing, calming and fun!

Mindfulness is so last year! Start 2017 with a relaxed, fun and transformative attitude to life, with a powerful combination of mindfulness, kindness and compassion. Mindfulness comes mostly from ancient eastern traditions, and science finds it to be effective for better health, wellbeing and performance. But…these ancient traditions also included lots of self-kindness and friendliness towards yourself and others, which can easily be lost through just trying to practice mindfulness alone.

• Discover how to go from being a control freak to a kindness freak.
• Experience a kindfulness exercise to cultivate joy, clarity and resilience.
• Discover how kindfulness can help reduce suffering.
• Understand why science is implementing kindness and compassion practices to overcome stress, anxiety, depression, and build a more resilience brain.

What a treat we’re in for! 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!

It’s time to party!

The Sunday Assembly was started by Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans, two comedians who were on the way to a gig in Bath when they discovered they both wanted to do something that was like church but totally secular and inclusive of all—no matter what they believed.

The first ever Sunday Assembly meeting took place on January 6th 2013 at The Nave in Islington. Almost 200 people turned up at the first meeting, 300 at the second and soon people all over the world asked to start one.

Three years later there are 68 Sunday Assembly chapters in 8 different countries where people sing songs, hear inspiring talks, and create community together.

Come and celebrate with us and hear stories of how Sunday Assembly has created something beautiful, complete with epic songs and cake!

Our first assembly of 2015!

That’s right! We’re celebrating tea at Sunday Assembly London.

Come and hear Ed Flint talk about tea, listen to Sophia Walker’s poetry and sing some Christmas pop classics as we warm up for Yule Rock.

You can also find out about all the fantastic ways you can get more involved with Sunday Assembly London.

We are back with an excellent speaker: Samantha Cleasby, writer, blogger and public speaker. Spreading awareness of IBD, Ulcerative Colitis, ileostomies and j pouches and being so bad ass…

Our poet this week will be Mike Galsworthy, and this is his YouTube channel.

Then there’ll be TEA AND CAKE! There’s no need to book and everyone is welcome. it’s free to attend, but please give a small donation if you can, so we can cover our costs.