About us
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 are committed to making every one of our events welcoming and safe for everybody. Our spaces are non-partisan, but not apolitical. Racism, fascism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, antisemitism, classism, and any other forms of discrimination based on preference or identity are not tolerated. If you are a victim of bigotry or harassment at any of our events, please raise this with an organizer, who will act appropriately. We broadly follow this code of conduct https://wiki.dbzer0.com/divisions-by-zero/the-anarchist-code-of-conduct/
Upcoming events
7
![LCC RUNNERS: Hyde Park Foundation Session [~1km] BEGINNERS](https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/2/1/a/a/highres_532568618.jpeg)
LCC RUNNERS: Hyde Park Foundation Session [~1km] BEGINNERS
Marble Arch Tube Station Exit 3, Oxford Street, London, GBWelcome back to LCC's Trail Running Club! This is our beginners' session in which we'll be training from the ground up, building strength and endurance in line with the NHS-approved Couch to 5k programme.
Beginners' training sessions are all about what's right for you, so we won't be following a fixed route or a set pace. We'll aim to do around 1km, alternatively jogging and walking, based on how we feel. Everyone is welcome no matter how little running you've done in your life so do come along and invite your friends, we'll be making sure no one gets left behind.
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, we got you.
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!
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!
4 attendees![LCC RUNNERS: Grand Union Canal, Paddington to King's Cross [4km] INTERMEDIATE](https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/2/2/1/5/highres_532568725.jpeg)
LCC RUNNERS: Grand Union Canal, Paddington to King's Cross [4km] INTERMEDIATE
Paddington Station, Paddington Station,, London, GBHello runners and welcome back to LCC's Running Club! For our next weekend outing, we're trying something new with a nice, flat run on London's famous Grand Union Canal towpath, right through the heart of the city. This is a flat one, suitable for beginners and intermediate experience levels. We'll be looking at a roughly 45-60 minute run, covering around 4 kilometres with about half a kilometre of cool-down walking at the end.
Our route will take us from Paddington station, north along the towpath on past Regent's Park and down south again to finish as we approach King's Cross Station.
All are welcome - we're running to build community, not break records, so no one will be left behind! I'll be bringing plenty of water along with me, so if you forget yours, fear not. Bathrooms facilities will be available at Paddington and King's Cross stations.
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!
2 attendees![LCC CITY DRIFTING: Greenwich, Peckham, Lambeth [SOUTH LONDON]](https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/2/5/a/3/highres_532689635.jpeg)
LCC CITY DRIFTING: Greenwich, Peckham, Lambeth [SOUTH LONDON]
Greenwich DLR Station, Kay Way, Greenwich High Rd,, London, GBWelcome back ramblers, rovers, loungers and loafers!
Once again, it's time to drift. We're picking up where we left off (well, a little west of there) last month to continue our long-term unguided navigation around the whole of London. We'll stay south of the river this time and keep pushing westwards into the heartland of glorious South London, starting from Greenwich and ending up, most likely, somewhere in Lambeth, via Peckham. These are some of the liveliest, most interesting parts of the metropolis so an extended exploration is a long time coming for us! Since this is a dérive, I won't say much more than that.
Meet out in front of Greenwich station, serviced by the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) as well as Thameslink (which cost the same as the Tube and run from big stations such as Farringdon and King's Cross) and Southwestern rail services.
Check planned TfL disruptions here - there are some disruptions to certain routes on the DLR for March 15th, but Greenwich station will be fine and our day should be all clear for most everybody: https://content.tfl.gov.uk/planned-track-closures.pdf
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".
20 attendees
![LET'S PLAY: ZARNITSA Sports Megagame [It's like Russian Capture the Flag]](https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/d/6/7/6/highres_532554902.jpeg)
Past events
240
![LCC RUNNERS: Hackney & QEII Parklands Trail Running [~3km] EVENING SESSION](https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/2/1/b/3/highres_532568627.jpeg)
