Roundup of GesherEU's Social Events 2025

From Kurdish dancing to celebrating Pride and heckling a pantomime dame, the past year at GesherEU has been a very busy and interesting one. We’ve delivered 33 events, attracting 322 participants, which greatly exceeded our expectations. 

Events have included theatre trips and festival meals, pub socials, Friday night dinners, two residential weekends, nature walks, and creative meet-ups. There were also several novel experiences. We went to our first West End show (Hadestown), our first pantomime at JW3,  hosted our first Christmas Dinner and enjoyed our first Pride picnic – as well as that aforementioned Kurdish dancing workshop. This year, we’ve also created a new Book Club and a wellbeing group, and members continue to benefit from our online parenting workshops. As one member commented, “Gesher events were the first time I ever went to a theatre — now I feel part of the world.”

Our events aren’t just about having fun or learning new skills. For our members, just being able to – for example – sit around a relaxed Seder table with friends and without obligations or rules is a transformative experience. Many of them have never been to a pub before, or ordered a drink, let alone made smalltalk with the opposite sex. Our events help them to increase their cultural understanding, learn about the secular world and to integrate within it. They also help build confidence.

For our members, GesherEU provides an alternative family. One member said: “I always feel right at home at a Gesher event. There’s no need to explain or justify. I can just be.”

Another said: “Every time I come to an event I instantly feel very welcomed and loved — especially when I feel the lack of family and community.”

A third commented on how stimulating GesherEU’s events can be: “Discussions with Gesher members have caused me to reflect on the attitudes around race and ‘othering’ that I absorbed growing up.”