What’s On

This time of year can be one full of joy and festive plans, but alongside the good cheer of the season is a rising concern for the increasing number of people experiencing homelessness or housing precarity.

The multi-award winning Museum of Homelessness – created and run by people with direct experience of homelessness – has been doing incredible work for the past 13 years: building the first national collection for homelessness, taking practical action, fighting injustice with research and campaigning, and educating on homelessness through groundbreaking art exhibitions and events.

Having been a ‘homeless’ museum since their establishment in 2010, they have recently been given their own museum space in Finsbury Park. Co-Founders Matt and Jess Turtle join us today at Sunday Assembly to share some of their incredible journey and plans for the museum’s public programme in 2024.

As usual, our magnificent in-house band will be leading us in song and there will be tea, biscuits and a good old natter afterwards. This time, we’ll also be showcasing our community’s crafting talents at a very special winter market – so do bring some cash!

As we all settle down to begin our hibernation for the winter, we will likely spend more time sleeping and dreaming than usual. The workings of these inner realms have beguiled and bewitched us since ancient times, with dreams being variously interpreted as prophetic messaging, psychological processing, a way to commune with ancestors and for some cultures, indistinguishable from reality itself.

Sarah Janes is a lucid dreaming researcher, presenter and workshop host exploring the anthropology of sleep, ancient dream cultures and philosophy. Sharing her more than a decade of research on Sleep Temples, Sarah explores the evolution of imagination, memory, and consciousness throughout the ages and proposes that dreams have been fundamental in the creation and development of culture.

Her forthcoming book about Mnemosyne, Greek goddess of Memory, explores the ancient history and philosophy of dream therapy and sleep medicine, beginning in deepest antiquity through to ancient Mesopotamia, and offers insight into our contemporary enquiries into psychedelics, altered states, synchronicity, parapsychology, and time perception.

The topic of alien life is no longer just in the realms of Science Fiction – it is now mainstream science with courses in Astrobiology being run by most Universities. Even NASA has a Centre for Astrobiology, and one of the tasks of the new James Webb Space Telescope is to look for signs of alien life.

In this talk, Dr. Peter Altman will speak about our place in the Universe, putting its size into context and looking at the historical origins of the concept of UFOs as well as current evidence and validity. He will help us to learn how to look out for the signs, and to think for ourselves, ‘what are the chances?!’

Dr. Peter Altman is a biochemist, medical researcher and publisher as well as a magician, having been a Member of the Magic Circle since 1984. He is also the author of Mysteries of the Universe and Astounding Facts about the Universe. A third book, Amazing Discoveries in Science, is in preparation.

We will also be graced with some poetry from Flora Ogilvy.

Prioritising happiness and kindness influences how we approach everything – including our personal lives, families, communities, schools and workplaces. It also shapes our views on public policy and helps us to consider the wellbeing of future generations too.

Sarah Vero, Head of Communications at Action for Happiness has a specialism in the intersection of joy, creativity, politics, mental health and wellbeing. She joins us today to talk about how we can help each other learn evidence-based skills for happier living, feel a sense of belonging and commit to personal action to create more happiness, for ourselves and others.

We are also thrilled to have poetry from Soni Quintero, poet and founder of Newham Poetry Group, Queer Newham, and Borderless; initiatives that facilitate access to creative writing for people new to the English language, and create safe and supportive spaces for POC LGBTQ+ refugees and forced migrants.

Nelson Mandela said that “no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails”, but few of us ever get to see for ourselves what life is like inside a UK prison.

Guest speaker: Rob Foreman

Sunday Assembly London’s own Rob Foreman has spent 10 years as an independent monitor observing conditions in London’s prisons. Monitors are volunteers who are granted access to prisons and other places of detention, in order to judge whether the people held there are being treated fairly and humanely, as well as providing an independent voice to those who are marginalised or unable to speak up for themselves.

Rob provided insights into how the reality of prisons matches the public perception, and the difference that volunteering has made to his own life.

Guest poet: Chris Syrus

Chris shared some of his poems from his new book of Poetry, LoveLife6968 Memoirs from The Pen, written whilst he was incarcerated. After turning his life around post release, Chris is now a Personal Development Speaker & Coach, using the creative arts to help young people at risk of offending.

Watch the recording

Ever heard of the Pink Plum tomato? The Mayan Jaguar lettuce, Lablab Bean or maybe the French Marigold?

To enlighten us on such things we are delighted to welcome Helene Schultz who is part of the collective behind the London Freedom Seed Bank, a grassroots urban seed network, stewarding over 170 London-grown vegetable, herb and flower varieties and helping to keep them alive and flourishing for future generations. She is also doing a PhD exploring the urban seed commons. She is interested in the ways seed savers, particularly of migrant heritage, subvert a long colonial and xenophobic regime which has dominated (and profited from) the international movement of plant material.

Helene is the editor of The Preserve Journal and part of the Garden of Earthly Delights, a guerrilla gardening collective. She is interested in mutual aid, particularly from feminist, anticolonial, antiracist and indigenous perspectives, and how working with seeds can help us build more just and care-full futures.

IG: https://www.instagram.com/helene__schulze/

LFSB IG: https://www.instagram.com/freedomseedbank/