Torriano Meeting House

Poetry Art Politics Community 

Torriano Meeting House  is a user-funded grass-roots volunteer-run arts and community organisation in Kentish Town. We are best known for our poetry events but we have many other long running strands including storytelling for adults, writing and storytelling workshops, hosting local political campaigning groups, theatrical events, left wing folk club, and we very much support grass-roots creativity and social change.  

Torriano is a space for you to organise events and projects.

“What is the purpose of resisting corporate globalization if not to protect the obscure, the ineffable, the unmarketable, the unmanageable, the local, the poetic and the eccentric? So they need to be practiced, celebrated and studied too, right now.” – Rebecca Solnit

 

Ruth Ingram: exhibition of textiles and photographs

Upcoming exhibition

Saad Mushatat 

17-28 March 2017

The artist thinks of himself as a product of the 1970’s, an era in Iraq that “was blessed with culture, art and creativity, (and) was very fundamental in shaping our lives,” he said.

Saad studied painting at Sir John Cass and Camberwell Schools of Art.

Evocation by John Nash, played by the composer at Torriano in 1989

Dedicated to John Rety and Susan Johns – founders of the Torriano Meeting House. This performance was part of a recital I gave at Torriano on 7th October 1989. Recorded on a pocket cassette machine held by a member of the audience. – John Nash

Torriano Poetry this Sunday

12th February 7.30. £5/£4 – Joan Michelson and Amali Rodrigo. Poets from the floor welcome

Kicking off Torriano Poetry 2017

22 January

Dempsey & Windle publishing present Patrick Osada, Eddie Chauncy, Kyle McHale and Dónall Dempsey introduced by Janice Windle. 7.30pm. £5/4 according to pocket. Poets from the floor welcome.

 

A FUNDRAISER FOR TORRIANO

Eve Pearce & Timothy Adès
AN EVENING WITH WILL

An Evening with Will: his sonnets in old and new versions
Presented by award-winning actress, Eve Pearce (Royal Shakespeare Company, West End productions of ‘Wild Oats’ and ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’, Mike Leigh’s ‘Topsy-Turvey’); and award-winning rhyming translator of Victor Hugo Timothy Adès who in his updating of Shakespeare has eschewed the letter E. And all to benefit Torriano Meeting House, the user-funded, grass-roots, volunteer-run arts and community organisation in Kentish Town.

Thursday 26 January, 7 for 7.30pm. £5/£4

Torriano Film Society presents

on Saturday 17 December 4pm

Enthusiasm

(1931, USSR, Dziga Vertov, 1 hour).
A weird, avantgarde documentary about
mining and five year plans.
A masterpiece of early sound film.

Egy Különc Úr Naplójából – From the Diary of an
Eccentric Gentleman

(1972, Hungary, Ágnes Háy, 15 min)
A papercut animation

Plus a series of suprise shorts

Free. Donations welcome

Unity Folk Club tonight

Unity Folk Club at Torriano| Drawing Emily Johns

Monday 28th Nov, 8pm, £4

 

Unity Folk Club  was started in the late 40s / early 50s by Jack Firestein, a Unity Theatre management committee chair, and the front of house face of Unity Theatre, running the bookstall in the foyer during every performance (weekends only) and the folk club in the bar on Wednesdays. Jack remained a steadfast, principled and caring socialist all his life. It was his life.

Unity was of course the left-wing theatre in Mornington Crescent that specialised in socialist theatre, famous for its political pantomimes and living newspapers and for being at the heart of the militant national theatre movement in the 1930s. The Unity made its name with Waiting for Lefty and was the first theatre to stage a Brecht play in Britain.

Paul Robeson. Photo: Library of Congress via wikicommons

The folk club had to move after fires shut the Theatre. Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson were two famous singers connected with the Unity Theatre and Jack.

The Unity Folk Club was at the Enterprise in Chalk Farm Road until 2003 when it moved to its present venue.

The central point of the club is to help to keep political folk singing alive, which is particularly necessary in the present climate.

Everybody welcome, especially singers and poets who sing or read against war, capitalism, exploitation, privatisation, imperialism and globalisation.

Admission fee: £4

 Last Monday of the month. 

For further details please contact  either by e-mail or phone 020 7485 8752.

THIS SUNDAY AT TORRIANO: A GREAT EVENING OF POETRY

7.30pm, 20th November, £5/£4

Danielle Hope and Caroline Carver

Poets from the floor welcome

 

Annie Sedley paintings

24 November – 31 December 2016

Receptions with artist on Friday 2nd December 6-9pm and Sunday 11th December 11.30am-3pm.

Annie Sedley’s paintings are a personal response to
colour, light and the rhythms of the landscape. Among
her subjects are UK landscapes, including Hampstead
Heath, London, Burton Bradstock, Dorset, Moel y Wynn
in Wales and South Hazlerigg, Northumberland, as well
as hot summer landscapes painted in Casole d’Elsa,
Italy, southwest France, and the landscapes of the
American Southwest, coastal Maine and Cape Cod.