The Living Room: 2011

Thursday 29 September 2011

Some of the Students and Teachers during the Free English Conversation Class

Socialising after the English Class, they all went to Wong Kei's, very famous Chinese restaurant.

Wednesday 28 September 2011

A NEW ARTS VENUE FOR SOHO

Come along to the Living Room this Friday for a sneak preview of our brand-new basement venue. Between now and Christmas, we'll be introducing emerging singer-songwriters as well as more established artists; we'll be hosting movie nights, impromptu poetry readings and a spot of stand up.

We're kicking off this Friday with an intimate performance from Kirsty Merryn. Using piano, ukulele and guitar, Kirsty's folk-blues style evokes a youthful nostalgia for her childhood home in the New Forest. Come and be transported to another place through stories of beauty, melancholy, love and loss.

Wednesday 14 September 2011

NEW LOOK FRIDAY NIGHTS

Friday night facelift

The Living Room Cafe – our weekly Soho social – has been running for over two years now, and will be returning soon after its summer break... bigger and better than ever! We'll be operating under a new name (yet to be decided) and we'll also be refitting the basement of The Living Room to make it more suitable for music and performance. If you'd like to be part of this exciting mission, please contact Dan or Cleverson. We're after volunteers to compère, cater, clean... or simply to be on hand to welcome people. We are also looking to expand our network of artists and performers, so if you know anyone looking for stage opportunities, get in touch!

> Email Dan mail@danharris.co.uk

> Email Cleverson cleversons@yahoo.com

The Living Room

The Living Room which is located at the heart of London, in Soho, next to Piccadilly Circus is a place where various educational,cultural and spiritual activities take place. Many of these activities are directed towards international students who come to London to learn English as part of the Student Support Centre. Containing three spacious room, one on ground floor and two in the basement it hosts many events from from music, art, English classes, helping the homeless and many more. Below is a list of various activities that take place at The Living Room. We hope you can join us at: 3 Green’s Court (off Brewer St) SOHO W1F 0HD Nearest tube – Piccadilly Circus

Thursday Thinking

Thursday Thinking is a space and forum, for talking and debating about God , Christianity and life in general . It usually runs for four weeks, normally in three different groups: The forum, digging deeper and New in the Journey. It starts 7 pm with a meal and 7:30pm the group discussion begins. It finishes just before 9pm. It is a good place to bring friends who are not Christian. It is a friendly atmosphere and safe place where everyone is encouraged to share their beliefs, and each week has a specific topic, so if you miss one you can always come back in the next one

Street Level ministry

City Gates church opens its doors to homeless people in the local community. On Monday's we offer food, tea and coffee's, a friendly ear, games, a short bible talk and a discussion on some of life's issues, along with praying for those who want to receive prayer.

The rest of the week are out in the homeless community meeting, loving and helping where we can. We also meet with them to help them with learning problems, relationship issues and other practical problems.

The primary vision of the homeless outreach is to give the love of Jesus to those who may never before have encountered it. Most of the issues of homelessness can't be solved by giving them a home, this just serves to get them out of the way. The real issues begin to be addressed when people take the time to be with these ladies and gentlemen and be their friends and gently help them to re-establish broken relationship and hurts they have encountered in their lives.

We ask the church congregation to provide old mobile phones which we give out to the guys. This serves to give the opportunity to re-establish communication with family who most often do not know where these guys are or even that they are homeless.

The Living Room Cafe

Designed to ease you into the weekend, the Living Room Cafe is our weekly social and music event in the heart of Soho. Every Friday night we offer a fine selection of teas, coffee and home-baked cake – along with intimate performances from some of London's finest up-and-coming acoustic bands and singer-songwriters.

The antithesis of "Friday night" Soho, our aim is to provide a space for laughter, relaxed conversation, friends and fun. Over the two years we've been running, we've drawn quite a crowd and we've recently expanded into a second room downstairs, which is ideal for our weekly performances. From blues-rock to hip-hop, our musicians are a diverse bunch, which makes for an intriguing and surprising programme of performances. And don't be surprised to find the odd bit of poetry, stand-up or spoken word thrown into the mix. We're proud of the eclectic, friendly reputation we've established and we're always looking to widen our network of emerging performers. If you think you fit the bill, drop in and say hello!

Global Women's book club

Global Women’s Book Club, started in the beginning of 2010 the aim of it is to bring women together to share their love of reading and connect with other women. In the group we choose books that reflect the diversity of cultures, that challenge cultural prejudices and that raise awareness of cross cultural living. The discussions are lively and stimulating and raise questions about identity, culture and belonging. We not only learn from the books but we learn a great deal from each other as we are able to bring our own cultural and lifes experience into the group discussion. There is also the social aspect of being able to meet together over a tea or coffee in a friendly environment in the centre of London. We believe activities such this create an opportunity to get to know othere people, majority not Christian, and share our faith.

Recent books that we have been reading are:
'The Joy Luck Club' (China)
'Brick Lane' (Bangladesh)
'Refugee Boy' (Ethiopa)
'The Bookseller of Kabul' (Afghanistan)
'The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency' (Africa)

We meet on the second Monday of each month from 10:00 - 12:00 at The Living Room