ConsciousCafe was launched in June 2011 in Judy Piatkus’ flat in North London with 25 people. Judy wanted to enjoy regular deep thoughtful conversations with friends and she wanted to invite them to meet together because she loves connecting people.
The first event was a discussion about 'What is Consciousness?' So many people enjoyed it that it encouraged Judy to offer more. After that everything spiralled and friends began to bring friends so that the community grew and its reputation for friendly meaningful conversation and connection began to spread. Since then the London ConsciousCafe group has offered over 150 events, a retreat and a conference. Several new ConsciousCafe groups have sprung up in the UK and abroad, run by a number of very dynamic conscious leaders and people have continued to enjoy their conscious conversations and build relationships.
The first few ConsciousCafe groups outside London - New Forest, Oundle and Canterbury are still going strong. Over the years we have added popular groups in several UK towns and now we are in Geneva, Annemasse in France, Singapore, and our latest group has just launched in Rome. We hope to have more new groups in the West Country in the not-too-distant future and we are always happy to talk to people who might like to lead their own group.
ConsciousCafe’s milestones are always the launch of new groups. Also important though has been our unique conference in 2016, Raising the Vibration of Love, a topic ahead of its time. (You can see videos from the day on our ConsciousCafe Youtube channel. Our guest speaker was the celebrated novelist and mystic Elif Shafak). We were also thrilled to win the Kindred Spirit Editor’s Pick Award in 2018 for our work in raising consciousness.
So there was a lot to celebrate at our birthday last week. Whatever our thoughts over the years about the world we would like to create, it certainly bore little resemblance to the world we have found ourselves in during these memorable months in 2020. Nevertheless, lockdown wasn’t going to stop us celebrating. With friends from France, America and Singapore and all over the UK coming online we introduced ourselves to one another, enjoyed a meditation together and broke into small groups for a discussion on the topic of Why is Life Precious to You? We concluded with a gorgeous birthday cake, provided by our facilitator Claudia Roth and her generous husband and we simultaneously blew out the cake candles and the candles we had brought with us and sang happy birthday.
It was a joyful uplifting celebration of 9 years of consciousness raising in an atmosphere of fun, friendship and love.
Here’s to the next exciting year ahead. We have a lot of work to do but, at this time in the history of our civilisation, nothing is more important than helping one another develop our own self-awareness and raise our consciousness. We are proud of the work we have done so far – each conversation benefiting everyone who takes part – and we look forward to the simple pleasure of learning from one another in conversation and contemplation as the months go by.
Judy Piatkus
ConsciousCafe is a not-for-profit organisation, a friendly and welcoming community, a place to live life consciously.