Song in Your Pocket

Three innovative workshops that weave songwriting with another creative practice. Explore notions of identity, delight, and the joy of play, making and songwriting, so that you have something to take home in your ear, and in your pocket! Fun guaranteed! Biscuits, too.

November 19th, 12:30- 2:30 - Preserving Identity: Pickles and Song with Jenny Lau (Celestial Peach) and Emma-Lee Moss (Emmy the Great/ lei,e)

"You never step in the same brine twice” - What do we preserve of ourselves, and how? Former bandmates Jenny Lau and Emma-Lee Moss bring together the art of pickling and the craft of songwriting, to tell a story about who we are as individuals, and as a collective.

November 26th, 12:30- 2:30 - Delight: a Fanzine and Songwriting workshop with Hannah Copley and Emma-Lee Moss (Emmy the Great/ lei,e)

What does it mean to be a fan of your own life? Join Hannah Copley and Emma-Lee Moss as we create zines, and write a song together, focusing the intensity of fandom onto the magic of our ordinary days.

December 10th, 12:30- 2:30 - Play: make a badge and write a song with Ben Walters and Emma-Lee Moss (Emmy the Great/ lei,e)

In this workshop, we will consider the badge as analogue social media, having fun with representing ourselves, and coming together to write a song about play, pleasure, and the power of images. There may be sprinklings of Christmas cheer during this afternoon!

Emma-Lee Moss (aka Emmy the Great) is a musician and writer. She loves bringing songwriting into community settings, and exploring all the ways that songs can bring joy, meaning and play into our lives.Jenny Lau is a writer and community chef. She founded Celestial Peach as a platform to tell and connect stories about the Chinese diaspora, and has since built a grassroots East and South East Asian community through her food events and multidisciplinary projects. She has twice been listed as one of Code Hospitality’s 100 Most Influential Women in Hospitality and in 2022 was nominated for Person of the Year at the Be Inclusive Hospitality Spotlight Awards. Her debut non-fiction book An A-Z Of Chinese Food (Recipes Not Included) comes out in January 2025.

Hannah Copley is a poet, lecturer and editor. She loves making zines to help understand her work-in-progress and to find and create new ideas. She is the author of two books, Speculum (Broken Sleep, 2021) and Lapwing (Pavilion Poetry, 2024) and is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Westminster. Lapwing was recently shortlisted for the TS Eliot poetry prize.

Ben Walters runs Badge Cafe, a pop-up space for people to relax, create and connect by making unique badges out of old books and magazines. The project emerges from Ben's academic research on queer fun as a social technology and the power of homemade mutant hope machines. @badgecafe

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Soho Poly, 16 Riding House Street, London, United Kingdom