In 2024, we focused on growth and broadening our reach - all while keeping our core principles - community and connection - at the heart of everything we do at Lumi Foundation. By the end of the year, we had taught over 1,600 classes and were joined almost 14,000 times by yogis rolling out a mat or pulling up a chair in one of our classes.
Lumi Foundation is a registered charity (number 1172800). Our mission is to make the benefits of a regular yoga practice accessible to everyone. In our classes we learn to combine movement and breath to build physical strength and to calm our mind. Through practising together in a group, we improve our mental, physical and social well-being. While we are teaching yoga, we are building communities and connections - combatting loneliness and isolation, building physical and mental resilience and forming friendships.
Lumi Foundation now delivers an average of 35 classes a week in the community and in partnership with over 20 different charities. We are proud of the growth we have achieved from small beginnings in 2017, when we started with one community class in the tenants’ hall on the Bayonne and Field housing estate in Fulham, and one charity partner, AgeUK in Hammersmith.
We started 2024 by repeating our six-week mindfulness course, delivered by our teacher, Katie Fobbester. For an hour a week, via livestream, Katie took us through an introduction to mindfulness and meditation and taught us the skills to live a mindful life. The programme was, once again, a super success.
Three of our teachers - Lorna, Mina and Trish - were awarded a yin yoga teacher training scholarship, funded by a grant from Hammersmith United Charities. In March, these three wonderful teachers got together to offer our community a yin yoga workshop to share their learnings. This was a joyful occasion and a wonderful reflection of the Foundation - supporting teachers and supporting our yogis.
In May, we had our first fundraising disco! Friday Night Fever, a bi-annual event held at Linden House on the river in Hammersmith, is hosted by local GP, Zoe Young. Zoe very kindly supported Lumi Foundation with her May event, which raised over £1000. We are incredibly grateful and look forward to boogieing the night away again in 2025!
Our teacher Rosie offered a new workshop in June - Breathe, Move, Write - in partnership with poet Demi Anter. Rosie and Demi led us through an afternoon of creative, thoughtful and fun exercises for body and mind, in a workshop which combined yoga, creative writing exercises, meditation and free movement to strengthen the mind-body connection and unlock creative energy. It was a fantastic afternoon which embodied another of the Foundation’s core principles - try something new!
For our third workshop of the year, we offered a sound bath workshop, Healing Vibrations. Our teacher Consuelo created a peaceful atmosphere where the soothing sounds of singing bowls, drums and chimes washed over a studio which was full to the brim. Any stress and tension melted away and after a blissful two hours, we floated out with a profound sense of calm. This workshop was kindly supported by a group of yogis who met on a retreat and learned about Lumi Foundation - and, as a result, we were able to offer the workshop for free to our Foundation yogis.
Community classes remain at the core of the Foundation and close to our hearts. In 2024, we continued our community classes at the Masbro Centre, White City Community Centre, Old Oak Family Hub and at the Earl’s Court Community Hub. These classes are well attended and offer a wonderful opportunity to build community and connection. We received the fantastic news at the end of the year that two of these classes will be funded by a Small Grant from the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in 2025.
We also started new community classes at the Irish Cultural Centre on Hammersmith Broadway, kindly supported by the centre, and at the Mind Sports Centre in Hammersmith where we are offering a mix of yoga and Pilates sessions, as part of Hammersmith and Fulham council’s Active Minds programme.
During 2024, we started new partnerships with St Andrew’s Youth Club (the oldest youth club in the world!); Advance, a charity supporting women escaping domestic violence; Fulham Reach Boat Club, where we offered yoga sessions as part of their holiday camps for disadvantaged local teenagers; Pocklington Lodge, a residence for people who are blind or visually impaired; and at two sheltered housing residences, Hopton’s Almshouse in Blackfriars and St Saviour’s in Purley.
We started a new partnership with social housing provider Notting Hill Genesis, bringing yoga to four of their communities across London. We partnered for the first time with the Queen’s Club Foundation to offer a yoga session to parents of children taking part in their community tennis classes, and with The Hurlingham Club Foundation to offer chair yoga sessions at their monthly gatherings of local elderly people. We also taught further classes for the Refugee Council, and another series of classes for the St Antonio Eritrean Women’s Group.
We are proud to continue to offer classes to our long-established partners, including AgeUK, The Creighton Centre, Maggie’s, Headway, Action on Disability, Ashchurch Centre, Log Cabin, Hotel School, The Marylebone Project, Turning Point, Imperial College, Riverside Studios, West London Welcome, Cobham Community Centre and the residents at Sycamore House and Percy Bilton Court.
We were the grateful recipients this year of a second grant from The Daisy Trust, a grant-giving charity based in Hammersmith & Fulham. The Daisy Trust chose to continue to support our class at West London Welcome, a local charity which supports asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants. We love this community and were so pleased to be able to share The Daisy Trust’s generous support with them. We are also teaching a regular class for a community of refugees from Ukraine, which has been supported by LBHF.
We were incredibly grateful to receive a grant from the Tin Plate Workers alias Wire Workers - our first grant from a City Guild. This was unrestricted funding and we chose to spend it on our classes being offered at Pocklington Lodge.
We received a grant from the Hyde Park Place Estate Charity to support our class at St Andrew’s. HPPEC supports projects which benefit individuals living in Westminster, so this class was a good fit and we were delighted to make this connection. We are also the grateful recipient of our first grant from The Hadley Trust.
Our livestream classes ran all year thanks to our second grant from The National Lottery Community Fund. This has covered the cost of providing five of our online classes every week - including mat, chair and yin yoga classes - which are offered for free to our community.
2024 marked the first full year of our Foundation Friends initiative. We were delighted to host several of our Friends at our workshops throughout the year and kept the group updated with a quarterly newsletter. We welcomed our Friends - old and new - to a celebration in September to mark a year of membership. The party was held with the generous support of Linden House and we again heard from a panel of partners, teachers and yogis. A wonderful evening of joy, community and connection.
We became affiliated to the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine and took part in two webinars hosted by BSLM, speaking on the topic of community yoga and wellbeing. This is an exciting new partnership and we look forward to making more connections through BSLM this year.
Eight new yoga teachers joined us through our Step Up to Reach Out mentorship programme in 2024, bringing our total number of teachers trained to lead classes at the Foundation to 40. We have continued to support and learn from each other through our ‘Teach the Teachers’ programme, this year sharing our experience on Safeguarding.
Festive Flow came around at the end of November as we kicked off the Christmas season in style. This year Agnès and Emily led us through our festive practise and Katie guided us through a meditation. A now familiar, riotous drawing of the raffle by Barb and Virginie was followed by gathering for snacks and drinks. The event, raffle and silent auction raised almost £2000 and we are as ever, incredibly thankful to all the businesses and yogis who donated prizes.
We are so grateful to our community for your incredible support in 2024. We look forward to seeing you in 2025.
Comments