‘Calling all makers, creators, artists, and artisans among us. We are a creative community, so let’s show off! Please come and display (and sell if you want) your creations at our Winter market, after the Assembly on Sunday 3 November.
If you aren’t planning to run a stall, you have the opportunity to admire our community members’ unique and fantastic creations and get a head start on your holiday season shopping! Come and have a look and talk with the makers from 12 pm on Sunday 3 November. Be ready to be amazed, intrigued, and dazzled!’
Thank you to Astrid for organising our Winter Market, and to everyone who bought something from the wonderful range of items on offer!
The point of Sunday Assembly Article Club is to challenge ourselves to read a diverse range of articles, share them with like-minded people and deal with our anxiety that we aren’t reading books.
How Article Club works
1. We meet every six weeks or so in or near the National Theatre. 2. We vote in advance and pick two articles from a short list to read before we meet. Usually one relates to politics/current affairs and the other to history, culture or science. 3. We talk about each one for around half an hour and the beauty of Article Club is that we can think more deeply about the broader themes of a topic, and how well the article gets to grips with them. 4. We each give a score out of 10 for the articles that have been discussed. 5. We set the date for the next Article Club and sometimes adjourn to the pub.
‘Join us after the Assembly for lunch and board games! Keep an eye on the weather and event listing in case we need to change venue. Bring a picnic mat and food from home or the nearby shops. And if you have any portable games, bring them too. Newcomers are very welcome. We generally play short, easy to learn, fun games.’
We meet every six weeks or so in or near the National Theatre.
We vote in advance and pick two articles from a short list to read before we meet. Usually one relates to politics/current affairs and the other to history, culture or science.
We talk about each one for around half an hour and the beauty of Article Club is that we can think more deeply about the broader themes of a topic, and how well the article gets to grips with them.
We each give a score out of 10 for the articles that have been discussed.
We set the date for the next Article Club and sometimes adjourn to the pub.
The point of Article Club is to challenge ourselves to read a diverse range of articles, share them with like-minded people and deal with our anxiety that we aren’t reading books.
Article Club was set up by Ross Bailey in 2015 who did a fantastic job at running it. Ross was followed by the equally fantastic Claire Ferraro. Alistair Baker has been in the chair for the past six years.
According to the Slavery Footprint survey, the average family in the UK unknowingly employs 90 slaves, often hidden in plain sight.
Sunday Assembly’s own Dr Astrid Leuba has been working against modern slavery and human trafficking for many years. Formerly Head of Corporate Responsibility at British Airways, she is now developing anti-slavery strategy and policy for Cancer Research UK and was recently nominated as Star of the Year for her work by Unseen, a UK charity running the UK Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline and providing safehouses for survivors of modern slavery and human trafficking.
Astrid guided us through how we can learn to identify signs of potential modern slavery, knowing how to report them, and better understand this troubled system of which we are all a part.
We were also joined by spoken word artist Amy Anam Cara, whose work reflects on the impacts of colonialism and imperialism on mental health and the ways in which the comfort of the global North demands the continued oppression of the global South.
Wouldn’t we all love to do things just ‘because’, without the pressure to have a good reason?
Steve Chapman is an artist, writer, speaker, consultant and coach, who encourages people to do just that! Interested in creativity and the human condition, he works with individuals and organisations to find creative and counter-intuitive ways to help free themselves from ever-tightening loops of stuckness, shame and imperfection, nurturing, instead, the freedom of spontaneous self-expression, creativity and innovation.
Hanna Finn wrote:
‘Sunday Assembly featured a talk by artist Steve Chapman, who told us about his hilarious art projects which often include the general public in weird and wonderful ways.
We took several creative challenges from his book WTFebruary and smooshed them into one:
Use discarded materials (an orange window blind someone was throwing out)
Draw birds, badly. Add made up bird sounds and names.
Start your own art gallery
Alan and I workshopped the name of the gallery by asking the audience to give us adjectives and bird names, and then randomly choosing two words. Then everyone was encouraged to draw birds (badly) before I strung them onto black string.’
We also had poetry from Kay Scorah, a multi-skilled creative who brings 70 years of experiment, risk, rage and learning to her writing.
You may have heard of the Baby Boomers, the Millennials and Gen Z. But have you heard of the Young Olds, the Mid Olds or the Old Olds? As human life expectancy has increased, there have been significant step changes in the way we perceive our life stages and their significance, and new research is proffering ever more nuanced categorisations of our experiences as a distinct ‘Generation’.
Vivien Louizos is a Counsellor and Life Coach for young people and adults, with a special interest in developmental psychology. Her research centres on the emergence of new categories in the life cycle, and the influence of our chronological age on the choices and decisions that we make.
As we continue to live later and longer, how do the determinants of our life experience change? To what extent are we influenced in our life choices by our age, and the unique circumstances of our stage of life? How real is the phenomenon of ‘My Generation’ – and is it biology, psychology, or the idiosyncrasies of the times in which we are born?
We also had a multigenerational poetry slot, with Gale Burns and Nadira Clare Wallace each offering some spoken word across the generation gap.
Gale Burns wrote:
‘Great fun to read poetry at the Sunday Assembly (a secular celebration on a Sunday in Bethnal Green) with Nadira Clare Wallace on the theme of different generations. Drop by one week, and you get free cake!’
‘The point of Article Club is to challenge ourselves to read a diverse range of articles, share them with like-minded people and deal with our anxiety that we aren’t reading books.’
At our Sundae Assembly special, ice cream scientist and Sunday Assembly’s own Tom Boulton took us through the history and culture of ice cream. Then we headed off on a delectable ice cream crawl through East London.
We departed from the Backyard Comedy Club immediately following the Assembly at 1pm, where we followed the rocky road onto:
Home to the famous Softy & Swirly. We sampled grown-up flavours such as loganberry and sheep’s ricotta as well as salted black sesame, honey with lemon and cardamom, and malted vanilla.
They also had La Grotta ices, a selection of seasonal frozen treats with an emphasis on fresh-tasting fruity combos – think pomegranate and leafy orange, pear and myrtle, wild fig and watermelon, or quince and bramley apple pie.
There were four basic flavours (vanilla, matcha, charcoal and coconut), but the thrill was in the photogenic toppings, which are arranged in Petri dishes on the counter ready for sprinkling.
Luxury ice cream inspired by natural botanicals and the magical flavours of the Middle East, including black tahini halva chunk, honey rum, date molasses & raisin, and Turkish coffee.
Gwawr Thomas wrote:
‘Such a lovely day today celebrating all things ice cream with Sunday Assembly – sorry, Sundae Assembly – pals, beginning with a fascinating talk about the science of ice cream making by the man whose job we all covet, Tom Boulton; progressing through a sampling of some delicious new Little Moons flavours, and culminating in a fabulous ice cream crawl around East London led by Ice Cream Queen Magdalena Hunter.’
Hanna Finn wrote:
‘Another great Sunday Assembly, with free ice cream, followed by the most money I’ve spent on ice cream in one day Thank you to Tom for the great ice cream science talk, and Mags for the tour of three different ice cream places in East London!
I had a cherry ice lolly, Oreo cheesecake ice cream in a cone, and a cup of rhubarb, pomegranate and rose gelato
Great to see everyone, and I’m glad we convinced two first timers, Naomi and Fiona, to join us for a few hours of walking and ice cream eating.’
‘Join us after the Assembly for lunch and board games! Keep an eye on the weather and event listing in case we need to change venue. Bring a picnic mat and food from home or the nearby shops. And if you have any portable games, bring them too. Newcomers are very welcome. We generally play short, easy to learn, fun games.’
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Thank you to Tom for the great ice cream science talk, and Mags for the tour of three different ice cream places in East London!
