Next party:
Saturday 16 March
Limehouse Town Hall,
646 Commercial Road
E14 7HA,
5:00pm to 3:00am
Limehouse Town Hall, the loveliest home we have ever known, is a 15-minute walk from Mile End, which runs to 3:15am on Saturdays. Buses run from outside the venue throughout the night. Please come and dance with us!
Future dates: 11 May, 6 July, 14 September
About
All Our Friends is a Saturday evening audiophile-community dance party run by Cyril Cornet, Cedric Lassonde (Beauty and the Beat) and Tim Lawrence (Love Saves the Day). We hold our events in intimate, friendly
spaces in East/North East London, currently Limehouse Town Hall and Folklore, previously Chats Palace and Drop Studios.
Because we want to build a community, entry is via an invite list. The list is inclusive, not exclusive! Anyone can join--just email tim@allourfriends.org to join the Friendship Train!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvj5df224C8
All Our Parties run from 5:00pm to 3:00am.
One of the reasons we started All Our Friends is we wanted a party where dancing began at a point in the evening when everyone has lots of energy and isn't necessarily bothered about going to a pub or a restaurant, so we encourage everyone to arrive nice and early for food as well as more socialising, more music, more dancing and more fun!
Entry is £15. We offer admission at £10 for people on low incomes/part-time students. Please just let us know if £10 is prohibitive.
A delicious vegan buffet prepared by Wendy is available for £5 and keeps us going throughout the course of the dance marathon!
Pre-paid reservations are available for those who like to plan in advance/be sure that entry is seamless. If you reserve in advance you will now be guaranteed immediate entry up to 11:00pm, after which you will need to join a queue if one has formed. Please note that we are unable to process refunds, but if you cancel before we sell out and close the pre-paid batch we will attempt to sell any unused reservations on your behalf.
We also hold back a substantial chunk of the total allocation for sale on the door on the evening of the party for those who can’t necessarily afford to pay in advance or prefer to live a spontaneous life :) These are available on a first come first served basis. Once that allocation is sold out those who arrive without a reservation will be admitted on a one in, one out basis.
Pre-paid reservations are available for those who like to plan in advance/be sure that entry is seamless
We politely request that dancers don't use phones or wear backpacks on the dance floor--please scroll down for our reasoning. We also insist that dancers are able to gather and express themselves free of harassment and do not tolerate any form of harassment--this is fundamental to our inclusive and expressive ethos .
The party came about after Tim, one of three co-founders of Lucky Cloud Sound System, which started to co-host parties with David Mancuso back in 2003, became inspired by a spring 2017 visit to the invite-only party Joy--an offshoot of the NYC Loft hosted in someone's apartment that got going early evening on Saturdays before ending around 1am. Deciding to start something similar in London, he soon found himself discussing the idea with Jem, Cedric and Cyril, good friends from Lucky Cloud and the organisers of Beauty and the Beat, an inclusive, audiophile offshoot of Lucky Cloud that combined the Loft aesthetic with a more global sound. The first All Our Friends party took place on 15 January 2018. After a year Jem stepped back. Since then we've invited a guest DJ to join Ced, Cyril and Tim behind the turntables for each gathering. It's been a joyous experience!
The All Our Friends name draws on the Arthur Russell/Dinosaur L line from “Go Bang”, “I wanna see all my friends at once, go bang”. (Tim published an autobiography about Arthur Russell.) It also alludes to house party/high-end stereo ethos that dates back to David Mancuso’s Loft, where Arthur would head to listen to his music.
Made up of omponents that are optimal for reproducing sound at a dance party--and the more we can hear and have the music enter and lead us the more beautiful the party will become--our high-end stereo system features Klipschorn speakers (the ever-present element in David’s Loft set-up), Mark Levinson and Sugden amps (, an Isonoe mixer and Technics turntables. A varied music selection brings together soulful, funky, cosmic, tropical sounds selected by Ced, Cyril and Tim plus regular guests. The heart of All Our Friends can be found on the dance floor and with the incredible team friends whose work, energy and spirit make it all happen.
You can listen to recordings of our parties on our Mixcloud page, https://www.mixcloud.com/all_our_friends/
For a sense of what it might mean in practice for All Our Friends to be a party that follows the deep psychedelic tradition of the Loft and other NYC parties, take a look at this helpful statement from our sister party, Beauty and the Beat.
We hope you’ll join us on the All Our Friends dance floor!
All Our Love,
xxx Ced, Cyril, Tim and the All Our Friends team xxx
Invite list
Here is some more information about how we run our invite list.
Because we want to build a community, running All Our Friends along the lines of a house party rather than a nightclub, admittance is via our invite list.
To join the invite list just write to Tim at tim@allourfriends.org.
One you're on the invite list you're on the invite list for all future All Our Friends parties and can bring a guest, meaning someone who isn't on the invite list (they guest needs to pay to get in but we don't need names in advance).
The invite list isn’t about exclusivity! Anyone can join--just write to us! You can also recommend friends who you think will get into our way of partying!
Our invite list is closely modelled on the system David Mancuso developed at the Broadway and Prince Street Lofts.
We hope you'll join the Friendship Train!
All Our Love,
All Our Friends
xxxxx
Party info
All aboard the Friendship Train!
All Our Friends hosts parties run from 5:00pm to 3:00am at Drop Studios, a photographic studio located in a ex-industrial textiles/clothing district, and Folklore, an independent live venue located at 186 Hackney Road, London E2 7QL. Drop Studios is a spacious, beautifully proportioned warehouse building that allows for expansive sound as well as an imaginative use of light and space--the potential is huge. Folklore is a warm, quirky, welcoming, semi-underground venue that's run along the lines of a DIY after-hours spot, with the dance floor and bar area occupying separate rooms--we've had some incredible post-pandemic parties there.
The cost of entry is £15. We also reserve 20 places at £10 for people on low incomes and £5 for the unemployed and full-time students—please just let us know at the door if this applies to you. A vegan buffet costing an extra £5 is available until around 9pm.
Pre-paid reservations available for those who like to plan in advance/be sure that entry is seamless. We also hold back close to half the total allocation for sale on the night of any party.
If you'd like to pre-pay write to tim@allourfriends.org confirming how many reservations you’d like to make and also if you’ll be joining us for the buffet. You'll then receive a payment link.
We do not issue refunds. However if we receive notice of any cancellation 24 hours before the start of the party we will attempt to re-sell the cancelled reservations and will issue a refund if successful.
Early arrival is strongly recommended for more socialising, more music, more dancing, more food and more fun--and to also avoid possible one-in one-out queueing!
To explain our approach to phones and rucksacks in a little more detail...
We politely request that dancers don't use phones (for texting, shazaming, photos, etc) on the dance floor. Our dance floor is a space for communal congregation, where people come together to celebrate and communicate in real time and space. Phones invariably detract from and break up the dance floor exchange, with the user no longer dancing and somewhere else, and those around the user distracted by the tech as well as the user, their immersion--the very purpose of the party--discourteously interrupted. If phone usage is unavoidable please do this by the side of the room, away from the dance floor.
We also ask that dancers don't dance with rucksacks as this is uncomfortable for people who dance behind them :) Self-service cloakrooms are available for bags as well as coats. Thank you for understanding!
If you bring a guest please pass on this and the previous info—thank you!
Hope to see you on the dance floor!
All Our Love,
All Our Friends
xxxxx
Mixes and contact
All mixes can be found on our Mixcloud page.
We are not on social media for various reasons, but we send emails to our invite list with news of parties and mixes, plus you can always write to tim@allourfriends.org with questions and comments. He particularly loves getting requests join the invite list :)
xxxxx