What we’re about
The Left Culture Club hosts social events, skill-sharing workshops, cultural activities, film screenings, reading groups and games nights for London's progressives, dissidents, and radicals. Everyone is welcome, whatever your politics or your level of political committment.
The Club was created to solve a problem: how do we bring together all people trying to face the political, economic and social challenges of our times and give them a space to understand each other better, without making political parties or activist organisations the starting point? There's nothing worse than trying to get to know people and explore progressive politics when the price of admission to these spaces is making all the right political committments, reading all the right literature, or having the right backstory. The LCC wants to make the political left a welcoming place again, and that means providing a space for progressives and radicals to move together without having to sign up to each others' newsletters from day one.
If you ever wanted to learn more about emancipatory politics, or if you've ever felt like your activist group or political org wasn't providing the social space that every broad movement needs in order to hold itself together, then the Left Culture Club is for you.
We're committed to making every one of our events welcoming and safe for everybody. Our spaces are non-partisan, but not apolitical. Racism, sexism, antisemitism, classism, forms of discrimination based on sexual preference or gender identity: all these are obviously way out of line. If you are a victim of bigotry or harrasment at any of our events, please raise this with an organiser who will act appropriately. We broadly follow this code of conduct https://wiki.dbzer0.com/the-anarchist-code-of-conduct/.
Upcoming events
5
![LCC RUNNERS: Hyde Park Trail Running [~3km] EVENING SESSION](https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/4/d/4/e/highres_527779790.jpeg)
LCC RUNNERS: Hyde Park Trail Running [~3km] EVENING SESSION
Marble Arch Tube Station Exit 3, Oxford Street, London, GBWelcome back to LCC's Trail Running Club! For our next outing we're heading to Hyde Park in central London for our first experiment in weekday, evening running.
Hyde Park will provide us a nice flat trail run. We'll be looking at roughly 30-45 minutes, covering around 3km at a moderate pace, ideal for beginners and intermediate runners. Whatever your speed, our organisers will always keep you in sight!
Our Hyde Park route will take us from the actual Marble Arch structure, by the Marble Arch tube station (on the Central line), south over the open ground to the long Rotten Row track running west, north and over the Serpentine Bridge crossing the lake, through the Hyde Park forest and finish out the run back at the Arch.
There are toilet facilities in Hyde Park which cost 20 pence (£0.20) to access; contactless payment cards are accepted but cash is not. If you haven't got a card but need the loo, don't worry, the organisers carry cards and will gladly spot you 20p. How generous is that?
I'll also be bringing plenty of water along with me, so if you forget yours, fear not. I've got a few spare bits of kit as well - if you would like a running sleeve to put your phone in or a pouch belt for keys and things, just shoot me a message on here ahead of time!
All are welcome - we're a mix of skill levels and leg lengths, so I'll be maintaining a relatively relaxed pace and will make sure no one winds up too far behind.
Our standard bit of info about our running group and why it's good is provided below:
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Humans evolved to run and sprint; no wonder then that when we do it regularly (within moderation and with plenty of rest days), our brains as well as bodies thank us. Running has recently been shown to improve neuroplasticity, heal brain damage in affected individuals, and foster better mental health including elevated mood at rest and enhanced task-switching ability. Doing all this in nature, as opposed to busy London roads dodging commuters and street cleaners, also helps deliver the well-known benefits of time spent in nature to mood, anxiety levels, cognition and memory. All these things matter a great deal in an age where burnout and exhaustion are a constant presence either in our own lives or those of the people we care about [who you should totally invite along]. It matters especially for people trying to eke out a percentage of their time and mental capacity for transformative social and political organising: the better we feel, the more we'll be able to do.
In a nutshell, running is great for you and you should do it. Trail running is even better. Best of all is doing all this with a supportive group of comrades, especially one which includes knowledgeable folks who can provide some structure to what can be a puzzling sport to get started with if building up to something, like a 10k or half marathon, is your goal. Part of our running group's programming will be building a series of events aimed at building people up, slowly but surely, towards specific goals, using progressive programmes similar to the NHS's Couch to 5k system.
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Take care and see you on the trails!
6 attendeesLCC RUNNERS: Hampstead Heath Trail Running [4-5km] ALL SPEEDS
Gospel Oak Overground station, London, NW5 1LT, London, GBWelcome back to LCC's Trail Running Club! For our next outing we're heading to Hampstead Heath. This is a moderately hilly run, but we'll be making for the uplands and forests at the top of the Heath where the terrain evens out and doing most of our run there. We'll be looking at a roughly 45-60 minute run, covering between 4 and 5 kilometres or thereabouts.
Our route will take us from Gospel Oak Overground Station (on the Mildmay and Suffragette lines) through the east side of the Heath, up Parliament Hill (at a relaxed pace), around Hampstead Heath Woods and its ponds in the north, and then back down through the Vale of Heath into Hampstead itself, with transport at Hampstead tube station (Northern line) and Hampstead Heath Overground station (Mildmay line).
All are welcome - we're a mix of skill levels and leg lengths, so I'll be maintaining a relatively relaxed pace and will make sure no one winds up too far behind.
Afterwards we may hit a cafe or pub to refuel and potentially discuss strategies and next steps for this little project.
I'll be bringing plenty of water along with me, so if you forget yours, fear not. I'll also have some misting sprays and microfibre towels if the day's weather feels over-hot for anyone.
Our standard bit of info about our running group and why it's good is provided below:
-----
Humans evolved to run and sprint; no wonder then that when we do it regularly (within moderation and with plenty of rest days), our brains as well as bodies thank us. Running has recently been shown to improve neuroplasticity, heal brain damage in affected individuals, and foster better mental health including elevated mood at rest and enhanced task-switching ability. Doing all this in nature, as opposed to busy London roads dodging commuters and street cleaners, also helps deliver the well-known benefits of time spent in nature to mood, anxiety levels, cognition and memory. All these things matter a great deal in an age where burnout and exhaustion are a constant presence either in our own lives or those of the people we care about [who you should totally invite along]. It matters especially for people trying to eke out a percentage of their time and mental capacity for transformative social and political organising: the better we feel, the more we'll be able to do.
In a nutshell, running is great for you and you should do it. Trail running is even better. Best of all is doing all this with a supportive group of comrades, especially one which includes knowledgeable folks who can provide some structure to what can be a puzzling sport to get started with if building up to something, like a 10k or half marathon, is your goal. Part of our running group's programming will be building a series of events aimed at building people up, slowly but surely, towards specific goals, using progressive programmes similar to the NHS's Couch to 5k system.
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Take care and see you on the trails!
3 attendees
LCC CITY DRIFTING: Docks & Docklands of Rotherhithe | SE LONDON
Canada Water station , Deal Porter Way, Surrey Quays, London SE16 7BB, GBWelcome back ramblers, rovers, loungers and loafers - our City Drifting series is back, this time taking on an oft-overlooked corner of inner-SE London: Rotherhithe and its old docks.
Since these walks are about discovery, I won't say much more than that. We'll meet out in front of Canada Water station on the day and let curiosity be our guide. With that in mind, Rotherhithe is packed with industrial history, from the Water in Canada Water to Greenland Dock, as well as natural history including Russia Dock Woodland and Stave Hill. We'll be within earshot of Millwall Stadium and the shadow of Canary Wharf, with the Isle of Dogs peninsula accessible via the ancient Greenwich Foot Tunnel under the River Thames. Be there!
A little background on our City Drifting project here:
Now just wait a minute. What the hell is a drift (dérive)? A drift is any unplanned journey through the urban landscape in which participants practice a form of radical mindfulness, collectively exploring new ways of relating mentally, ideologically and materially to the "ordinary" urban environment we all think we know so well.
First theorised publicly by Situationist thinker, artist and provocateur Guy Debord in his 1956 essay Theory of the Dérive, drifting is a sort of critique of ideology done by walking, looking, and feeling. The urban environment of London is not a neutral space: it is packed with surveillance equipment, anti-homeless architecture, consumerist Gruen transfers, crowd management systems and security perimeters, among a thousand other subtle and not-so-subtle methods of population control. Moreover, our everyday relationship to the city and its pathways is conditioned deeply by our habits of movement and our habitual perceptions: our commute to work, to school, our nips down to the shops, etc. All these routines create what Marxists call a reified relationship with the urban environment: through over-familiarity it becomes something seemingly natural, "just there", ordinary, unchangeable - boring. This boredom and familiarity kills the radical imagination, without which we're fucked.
To be able to start to imagine how society could be transformed, we also need to imagine how spaces, buildings, their use, their whole purpose (and who these serve) could themselves be transformed. A necessary step in this process, according to Debord and the Situationists, is the drift. Like the 19th-century gentleman flâneur, by wandering the city with an attitude of "fresh eyes", we can shake loose our ingrained sense of what London and its streets are like. As a collective, we will work to "estrange our senses" and see the streets, buildings and people differently, as if we were encountering them for the first time. That is to say: these aren't just random walks around London - with the right frame of mind, they will be opportunities to turn the world upside down, if only for a moment!
But don't take it from me - as Debord observed:
"In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. Chance is a less important factor in this activity than one might think: from a dérive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones."
See you on the streets comrades, and remember, as Raoul Vaneigem once wrote: "All space is occupied by the enemy. We are living under a permanent curfew. Not just the cops — the geometry".
17 attendees
LCC goes to the Palestine Film Festival @ the Barbican!
Barbican Centre, London, GBPlease join us to watch 'Thank you for banking with us!' at the Barbican!
It is part of the wider London Palestine Film Festival. Buy Tickets here!
We are going to try and get seats in middle of Row K.About the film: After discovering that their father left behind a large sum of money, Mariam and Noura reunite in Ramallah. They devise an elaborate scheme to withdraw the funds before their estranged brother — who is legally entitled to half the inheritance under Islamic law — finds out about their father’s death. As they race against time, the sisters must conceal the truth, navigate old tensions and test the limits of loyalty in a desperate bid to claim what they believe is rightfully theirs. As time runs out, moral lines blur and sibling wounds resurface.
https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2025/event/lpff-2025-thank-you-for-banking-with-us
For information about the wider palestine film festival please visit: https://www.palestinefilm.org.uk/
17 attendees
Past events
225
![WILD SWIMMING @ Hampstead Heath Mixed Pond [£4.80 MORNING SESSIONS]](https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/8/5/d/f/highres_529354271.jpeg)
