Our assemblies & events in January-June 2025

11:00 am, June 15 2025

Backyard Comedy Club, Bethnal Green

Speaker: Lots

Poet: Lots

Joy To The World! Sumptuous Resolutions for the New Year

  • 11:00 am, January 5 2025
  • Speaker: Tamu Thomas
  • Poet: Joe James

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

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 invited 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.

The Art of Healing: Transforming Mental Health Hospitals

  • 11:00 am, January 19 2025
  • Speaker: Tim Shaw
  • Poet: Rachel Lewis

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.

Co-founder Tim Shaw was with us to talk about the charity’s 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 welcomed 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.

Men’s Sheds: Craft, Connection and Community

  • 11:00 am, February 2 2025
  • Speaker: Mike Jenn

In 1999, in a rural area of Australia, a woman noticed that many of the retired, local miners and veterans were suffering from a sense of isolation and purposelessness; missing working with their fellow men. Coinciding with a developing awareness of a crisis within men’s mental health, a pilot workshop was put together, inviting men to come and restore furniture and fix appliances, allowing them to connect with the people around them, and learn new skills.

Men’s Sheds, as they came to be known, are now a global phenomenon, with nearly 3,000 sheds operating in 12 countries, including Ireland, UK, New Zealand, Canada, US, Kenya, and South Africa.

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”

We are joined by Founder and Life President of the UK’s branch of MSA, Mike Jenn, who has worked in practical social innovations for 50 years across community education and relieving deprivation. He shared with us how the charities’ “shedagogy” continues to grow and change lives; fostering community, creativity and tackling life-shortening isolation for many.

We were also treated to some ‘Shedding your inhibitions!’ games by our resident Games Master, Matt!

Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want!

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 welcomed back 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.

We also had poetry 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.

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
– Our first ever comedy fundraiser, bringing four fantastic comedians to you on 10th April – details below

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!

Everyday Jews: cultural insights, comedy and a community story

Following his hilarious 2022 Sunday Assembly talk on the multilingual warning messages inside Kinder Surprise Eggs(!), we welcomed back speaker and author Keith Kahn-Harris to discuss his new book, Everyday Jews: Why the Jewish People Are Not Who You Think They Are.

The book was inspired by Keith’s growing sense, as a Jew, that the Jewish people are now so public, so significant, so loved and so hated that the everyday stuff of Jewish life risks becoming ‘hollowed out’. In response, he aims to show that Jews can also be boring, mediocre and mundane, and that the ‘secular’ aspects of Jewish religious practice are often ignored but are the beating heart of Jewish religious life.

We learned how synagogues are as much about supper quizzes and social life as they are about communing with the divine, and the value in remembering that Jewish life can have its mundane and mediocre moments too.

We also welcomed jogger, chess player and stand-up comedian Rabbi Mendy Korer to this Assembly!

Founder of Chabad Islington, the only Jewish community centre in Islington, he loves to find ways to connect with people from diverse backgrounds, particularly through the human, spiritual and comedic relatability of Chassidic ultra-orthodox Jews.

Our songs

Our Sunday Assembly band performed three songs written and/or sung by Jewish artists:

  • The Life of Riley – The Lightning Seeds
  • Eternal Flame – The Bangles
  • Valerie – as sung by Amy Winehouse

This Much I Know

Today 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.

This time, David Goldstein explained why he started coming to Sunday Assembly 10 years after hearing about us… and shared some big news about a grant application he’s been involved with. Find out more here

Notices

Topics of our notices included:

  • Our Book Swap table (where swapping is not compulsory)
  • Our first ever comedy fundraiser, bringing four fantastic comedians to you on 10th April – details below
  • Sunday Assembly’s annual conference, which this year is in Glasgow from 25th-28th September

As always, we followed the assembly with tea, biscuits and chat (and a sip of Palwin Jewish wine from Keith) at the Backyard Comedy Club, Lunch Club (at Hulya’s Cafe) and drinks & games at The Three Colts pub.

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

Use Your Voice: How to Unlock Your Courage and Amplify Your Message

Previously a guest poet at Sunday Assembly, we were delighted to welcome back writer, poet and entrepreneur Anna Herber as our speaker.

[Photo credit: Anna Herber, LinkedIn]

Anna helps people move through resistance and fear so they can share powerful messages that question the status quo and grow their impact.

For this special IWD talk, Anna celebrated women who have used their voices to create change, as well as some of the most common ways that women are silenced, and how to overcome them.

Drawing from her own experience, she showed us how to liberate our outspoken inner activist, truth speaker and wisdom keeper – overcoming procrastination and perfectionism, unlocking our courage and amplifying our authentic voice.

Watch a clip from Anna’s previous Sunday Assembly visit on Instagram

With Amy Anam Cara sadly unable to join us due to illness, community member Kay Scorah kindly stepped in.

We loved her Gender Stereowiped Nursery Rhymes, which included Jill giving Jack essential first aid and Mary profiting off organic wool sweaters!

Our songs

Our Sunday Assembly band had us singing along to four empowering songs from female artists: 

  • Hold On – Wilson Phillips
  • Unwritten – Natasha Bedingfield
  • You Gotta Be – Des’Ree
  • Brave – Sara Bareilles

Notices

Topics of our notices included:

  • Our Book Swap table (where swapping is not compulsory)
  • Our first ever comedy fundraiser, bringing four fantastic comedians to you on 10th April – details below
  • Our next Sunday Assembly Article Club on Thursday 3rd April
  • Sunday Assembly’s annual conference, which this year is in Glasgow from 25th-28th September
  • An invitation from Ann to help steward the Mile End Parkrun on Sunday 18 May
  • An invitation from Tanya to come to the Enrich Festival in Watford on the weekend of 26th-27th April. Enrich Festival is an inclusive arts festival showcasing the immense talent of disabled and neurodivergent artists and performers. The Sunday Assembly London band are performing on the Sunday

A bonus guest poet

Inspired by Anna’s talk, community member Steph read out a poem by her friend, whose experiences in Afghanistan had moved him to urge his fellow men to support women.

As always, we followed the assembly with tea, biscuits and chat at the Backyard Comedy Club, then lunch, drinks & games at The Three Colts pub.

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

Thanks also to everyone who wore purple in support of International Women’s day.

International Women’s Day 2024 at Sunday Assembly

As part of last year’s Sunday Assembly IWD Special, we wrote personal pledges to Inspire Inclusion, that year’s theme. Here’s a selection of our pledges. Click or tap to enlarge:

The Mindful Photo Lab: love your camera, make some memories

  • 11:00 am, April 6 2025
  • Speaker: Pierre Bureau

The smartphone and social media age has made taking photos a part of our lives like never before. But is there a more fulfilling way to approach photography?

On Sunday 6 April, we heard from guest speaker Pierre Bureau, Founder of Mindful Photo Lab and the East London Photography Festival: an exciting initiative that blends mindfulness, creativity, and community engagement through photography.

Pierre told us how he was inspired to start a community that used photography to improve mental health, and the festival’s mission to celebrate East London’s rich cultural diversity and its focus on fostering wellbeing and connection through visual storytelling.

Our songs

Our Sunday Assembly band had us singing along to four photo-themed pop songs: 

  • Picture of You – Boyzone
  • Photograph – Ed Sheeran
  • Wishing (If I had a Photograph of You) – A Flock of Seagulls
  • Paparazzi – Lady Gaga

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

Comedy Night: a good laugh, a great cause, zero bores!

  • 7:30 pm, April 10 2025
  • COLAB Tower, London Bridge

Thanks to everyone who came to our comedy fundraiser with Quantum Leopard!

Ever since Sunday Assembly was founded – by two comedians – our three tenets have included Live Better and Wonder More. (We’ll get to the other tenet later.) Comedy nights are great for both: the uplift of shared laughter and the marvel of well-crafted comedy.

And what’s better than two comedians?

Four comedians! They entertained us on 10th April.

Our host was James Ross, whose Quantum Leopard comedy nights have won awards for showcasing stand-up that doesn’t punch down. He put together a fabulous line-up for us:

  • Mark Thomas: Mark’s been performing comedy on stage and screen for over 35 years. He mixes theatre, journalism and the odd bout of performance art
  • Ben Pope: From Cambridge Footlights to Edinburgh Fringe to London clubs, Ben’s been called ‘one of the best storytellers in comedy’
  • Jamie Mykaela: A comedy-cabaret artist who’s been described as ‘bawdy, brassy, vulnerable and intense’, with performances fuelled by 12 years of opera training
  • Alex Franklin: Acclaimed in 2024 for being ‘winningly weird’, Alex’s performances have blended musical comedy, science and the joy of being trans

The details for this not-on-a-Sunday spectacular were:

Thursday 10th April from 7:30pm to 10pm (doors open at 7:30pm; show starts at 8pm)
COLAB Theatre, 22 Southwark Bridge Road, London SE1 9HB

What happened to the ticket fees? None of it went to our host, thanks to his amazing generosity; the performers didn’t want a cut either. Every penny went to Sunday Assembly London, at a time when we really need it to ensure we have a future.

So while the audience were laughing to keep our lights on, they were upholding our other tenet: Help Often. And we’re so grateful to them.

It’s Not Easy Being Green: Living Well in a Climate Crisis

An educational assembly, connecting us to the most pressing issue of today’s world and our emotions around it. Read on to find out more…

The UN target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C looks likely to be broken soon. Despite great advances in renewables, fossil fuel use continues to increase, and the impact of climate change is being increasingly witnessed worldwide.

In a world that seems committed to business as usual, how do we continue to live well, overcome eco-anxiety and be optimistic for the future? How do we step outside any denial or numbness and better understand what meaningful action for us individually and as a society in the current period looks like?

With Earth Day coming up on 22 April, we were joined by Gale Burns: Greenpeace speaker and advisor, qualified psychotherapeutic counsellor and a founding member of the Climate Minds Coalition. He works with many organisations setting up listening structures so that new solutions can be found to challenging issues.

Gale condensed an overwhelming topic into a concise presentation: explaining the impact of climate change, the potential consequences of inaction, and what we can each do to live better and help the planet.

Stressing the importance of acting and learning in unison, Gale encouraged us to do a listening exercise. In pairs, we took turns to talk about the climate crisis, our personal perspective and the emotions we associate with it.

We were grateful to Sue Johns for stepping in as poet at short notice. Sue’s poems reflected on aspects of the natural world and its disharmony with the manmade world, from a bag stuck in a sycamore tree to animals’ reclamation of the world during lockdown in 2020.

Our songs

Our Sunday Assembly band had us singing along to four songs with links to environmental threats: 

  • Weather With You – Crowded House
  • Ring Of Fire – Johnny Cash
  • Big Yellow Taxi – Joni Mitchell
  • Set Fire To The Rain – Adele

This Much I Know: Leon Baruah

This Much I Know is an opportunity for our Sunday Assembly London community members to shine a light on a specialism, talent or passion they have.

Leon gave us an insight into his work with Viridian Logic in ecohydrology: natural flood management to benefit ecosystems.

Notices

Topics of our notices included:

  • Our Book Swap table (where swapping is not compulsory)
  • A thank you to everyone who supported our first ever comedy fundraiser on 10th April. We raised over £,1000 for Sunday Assembly London! We’re already talking about the next comedy night
  • Sunday Assembly’s annual conference, which this year is in Glasgow from 25th-28th September
  • An invitation from Ann to help steward the Mile End Parkrun on Sunday 18 May
  • The Enrich Festival in Watford on the weekend of 26th-27th April. Enrich Festival is an inclusive arts festival showcasing the immense talent of disabled and neurodivergent artists and performers. The Sunday Assembly London band are performing on the Sunday

As always, we followed the assembly with tea, biscuits and chat at the Backyard Comedy Club, lunch locally, and drinks & games at The Three Colts pub.

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

Sunday Assembly London band at Enrich Festival 2025

  • 3:30 pm, April 27 2025
  • Watford Palace Theatre

Our Sunday Assembly London band had great fun playing pop songs at Enrich Festival on Sunday 27th April, alongside a brilliant and inclusive line-up of talented performers.

How the festival describes itself:

‘Enrich Festival is an inclusive Arts festival showcasing the immense talent of disabled and neurodivergent artists and performers in the UK. It is produced by Herts Inclusive Theatre, an award winning charity that aims to break down barriers about disability through the Performing Arts.

Enrich Festival is delighted to return to Watford Palace Theatre on 26th & 27th April 2025. Join us as we showcase the immense talent of neurodiverse and disabled people in the Arts through drama, dance, film, art, comedy, music and poetry; complemented by inclusive and fully accessible arts-based workshops for all ages and abilities, there’s something for everyone across this weekend extravaganza!’

Our live band (which includes exceptionally talented neurodivergent musicians) made it their mission to get the whole theatre singing along to well-known pop songs. In true Sunday Assembly style, the lyrics were on a big screen so everyone could sing along if they wanted to.

A typical Sunday Assembly has four songs; the Enrich audience got ten songs! They included:

  • A Little Respect – Erasure
  • Let It Go from Frozen
  • Flowers – Miley Cyrus
  • What Makes You Beautiful – One Direction
  • It’s My Life – Bon Jovi
  • Grace Kelly – Mika
  • This Is Me from The Greatest Showman
  • Mamma Mia – ABBA

Well done to our band, thanks to everyone who came along and congratulations to Sunday Assembly London’s Tanya Byrne for making such an amazing festival happen!

Find out more at enrichfestival.org

Bubble Club: Inclusive Nightlife Under Threat

We love Sunday mornings, but there’s nothing quite like a good night out. Having a drink and a dance. Staying out late. Catching up with old friends and making new ones. But what if going out-out comes with obstacles?

For someone with a learning disability, a night out can be life-changing. Fortunately there’s a special organisation that’s been making that happen for 20 years – and it began in a place that Sunday Assembly London know well.

On 4th May we were joined by Twinks Burnett, Marketing and Communications Manager for Bubble Club: an award-winning East London non-profit that co-creates high-quality, inclusive club nights for adults with learning disabilities as well as running development programmes for learning-disabled artists and DJs in the community. 

Founded in 2005 – at the Backyard Comedy Club where Sunday Assembly London now resides – Bubble Club offers rare opportunities for fully accessible and carefully curated club nights for people who have felt excluded from mainstream venues, from live music and DJs to open mic nights and sensory spaces.

Twinks took us through the history of this groundbreaking organisation as well as its current challenges in the face of club & pub closures and council funding cuts.

Bubble Club community member Rufaro, aka DJ Awesome, read heartfelt poems he’d written about relationships, friendship and loneliness.

Watch videos of Rufaro sharing his poetry with us

Today’s songs

To the accompaniment of a bubble machine, we sang along as our Sunday Assembly London band performed four pop songs connected to today’s theme:

  • Murder on the Dancefloor – Sophie Ellis-Bextor
  • Shut Up and Dance – Kill the Moon
  • Wake Me Up – Avicii
  • I Want it That Way – Backstreet Boys 

Notices

Today’s updates included:

  • Our book swap table: a flexibly defined feature of all our assemblies where books can be donated and/or taken
  • A call for volunteers for the Mile End Parkrun at 9am on 18th May. Contact Ann via our Facebook page for more details
  • Diane’s plans to lead a guided walk, Putting the Green into Bethnal Green, meeting at The Three Colts pub at 2pm on 18th May
  • A reminder about the Sunday Assembly Global Gathering in Glasgow in September

About the date…

If you marked today as Star Wars Day (“May the Fourth be with you”), then unlike Darth Vader we don’t find a lack of faith disturbing. All faiths and no faiths are welcome at Sunday Assembly London for our secular celebration of life. So come and say hello: you won’t be Solo!

Come Together: Towards a Synergistic Society

  • 11:00 am, May 18 2025
  • Speaker: John Graves
  • Poet: Rowan

Could a look into history give the modern buzzword ‘synergy’ real meaning, while bringing us closer to our Sunday Assembly goals to Live Better, Help Often and Wonder More? Today we tackled this question, while also reflecting on Mental Health Awareness Week and giving a nod to yesterday’s Eurovision Song Contest.

How did we cram all of that into 90 minutes? Read on to find out…

Throughout history, societies and economies have been governed by a succession of elites who have amassed enormous wealth while the bulk of their fellow citizens live in relative poverty. 

They are often presented as exceptional, entrepreneurial, gifted individuals, when in fact they’re driven by insecurity and attempts to overcome their sense of inferiority.

Some pre-industrial societies managed to avoid this schismatic structure, finding a way to harness these energies for social benefit. What can we learn today from these synergistic societies?

We were delighted to welcome back John Graves: psychotherapeutic studies teacher, life coach and lifelong philosophy student. John explored the ingrained disparity between society’s wealthiest and poorest, explaining how our own society could achieve greater synergy: individuals’ assets and actions supporting the common good.

We also heard from East London poet Rowan. Rowan’s poetry expressed his ideas about loneliness and life’s journeys, including the virtues of a metaphorical unicycle. 

Today’s songs

Our Sunday Assembly London Band performed four songs: three on the theme of togetherness, one in reference to Eurovision:

  • Come Together – The Beatles
  • Together in Electric Dreams – Phil Oakey and Giorgio Moroder
  • Happy Together – The Turtles
  • Waterloo – ABBA

Notices

Today’s updates included:

  • Our book swap table: a flexibly defined feature of all our assemblies where books can be donated and/or taken (but ideally taken as we have a lot at the moment)
  • A thank you from Ann to Aaron and David, the volunteers who joined her to help steward the Mile End junior parkrun before today’s assembly
  • A reminder about the Sunday Assembly Global Gathering in Glasgow in September
  • Marking the last day of Mental Health Awareness Week and its official theme of Community, our new Community Engagement Lead Tanya invited us to ‘leaf a message’ about our experiences of Sunday Assembly London’s community after the assembly. Thank you to everyone for their contributions, which you can read here

As always, we followed the assembly with tea, biscuits and chat at the Backyard Comedy Club, lunch locally, and drinks & games at The Three Colts pub.

As a bonus, we also had a guided walk. At 2pm, Sunday Assembly London volunteer and local resident Diane hosted a tour of the spaces that put the green into Bethnal Green, sharing her wealth of local knowledge.

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

Craftivism: The Art of Gentle Protest

  • 11:00 am, June 1 2025
  • Speaker: Sarah P Corbett

We all have issues we’re passionate about. But what if shouting in protest isn’t your style? Could the answer be not to get cross, but to get cross-stitching?

That was the topic we explored at today’s assembly, with singing, sketching and superb news thrown in. Read on to find out more…

The global Craftivist Collective has helped change laws, policies, hearts and minds around the world as well as expand the view of what activism can be.

We were joined by its founder Sarah P Corbett: an award-winning activist whose ‘Gentle Protest’ methodology of strategic, compassionate, scientifically-backed and visually intriguing activism has helped craft a more beautiful, kinder and fairer society.

We learned about the unique appeal of craftivism: for skilled crafters, burnt-out activists, introverts, highly sensitive people or those struggling with anxiety. We heard how it replaces aggressive enemies with critical friends. And we discovered how embroidered hankies really can change how major companies operate. 

Thank you to Sarah for her inspiring stories of Craftivist Collective’s meaningful, measurable impact: a tribute to the perseverance of a determined voice.

If you missed it, look online for Sarah’s TED talks (or should that be thread talks?). To get deeper into craftivism, Sarah’s latest book is available at a discount through Sunday Assembly London’s online bookshop.

Today’s songs

In the spirit of using our voices together, there were four pop songs performed by our Sunday Assembly London band:

  • Paint it Black – Rolling Stones
  • Pencil Full of Lead – Paolo Nutini
  • Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds – The Beatles
  • Perfect Day – Lou Reed 

Portraits

We love drawing people in to our twice-monthly assemblies. This time we took it literally when Matt encouraged us to pair up and sketch each other.

We had fun admiring each other’s results and trust that the National Portrait Gallery is making space as we speak.

A big announcement at today’s assembly

Sunday Assembly London have been awarded a National Lottery grant!

This goes a huge way towards covering our running costs for 2025. More than that, it helps our small volunteer-led charity to continue doing what we’ve proudly been doing for over a decade: hosting events and sustaining a secular community that helps people to Live Better, Help Often and Wonder More.

A massive thank you to Tanya for her work on the grant application!

As always, we followed the assembly with tea, biscuits and chat at the Backyard Comedy Club, lunch locally (taking advantage of the picnic-friendly weather), and drinks & games at The Three Colts pub.

Thanks to our host Hanna; co-host Andrew; all our wonderful volunteers (especially as it’s Volunteers’ Week from 2nd-8th June) and everyone who filled the room with singing, good energy and appreciation – especially our first-timers!

If you enjoyed yourself, please spread the word by sharing our social media posts or tagging us in your posts.

Dolphins: Their World and Ours

  • 11:00 am, June 15 2025
  • Speaker: Pavan Kaur Virdee
  • Poet: Kay Scorah

Exploring our value Wonder More inspires us not only to look around at our own world but also to look into other realms, such as outer space and, today, beneath the waves.

In honour of World Ocean Day on 8th June, we were joined by London based marine biologist Pavan Kaur Virdee, who shared her life-long passion and knowledge about the world of dolphins. Pavan’s presentation introduced us to cetaceans found in UK waters, from playful bottlenose dolphins to mysterious minke whales.

We also heard how the ocean is under threat from noise pollution and plastic pollution, and how we can help. Even two minutes spent picking up plastic litter can help keep it out of rivers, away from the ocean and ultimately out of a food chain that leads to humans ingesting a credit card’s worth of microplastics every week.

Sunday Assembly London’s own Kay Scorah stepped in at short notice with specially written dolphin-themed verses.

Read Kay’s dolphin day poems in her blog

Today’s songs

We sang along to four pop songs performed by our Sunday Assembly London band, all with connections to the ocean waves:

  • Wellerman – Nathan Evans 
  • Surfin’ USA – Beach Boys
  • Octopus’ Garden – The Beatles
  • Heroes – David Bowie (the lyrics mention dolphins!)

The return of our bubble machine added to the fun!

As always, we followed the assembly with tea, biscuits and chat at the Backyard Comedy Club, lunch locally (taking advantage of the picnic-friendly weather), and drinks & games at The Three Colts pub.

Thanks to our host Shane; co-host Matt; all our wonderful volunteers from tech to tea, and everyone who filled the room with singing, good energy and appreciation – especially our first-timers!

If you enjoyed yourself, please spread the word by sharing our social media posts or tagging us in your posts.

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