Founded in 2016 as an experiment as part of the Anti University events , Xenia emerged from local women’s desire to connect with others in their area across differences, welcome newcomers to Hackney and make language learning more accessible. We’ve been going strong ever since, meeting every Saturday in Hackney & Tower Hamlets - enabling more and more women to share, connect and learn from each other. Come along one day to find out more- or watch our video here.

In June 2022 we started a monthly Xenia session in Sheffield. The sessions have gone from strength to strength and they are now fortnightly in a central location. Refugees, asylum seekers, migrant and British women are welcome to join us to discuss a variety of topics that matter to us. We are working in partnership with Sheffield Museums to plan a series of visits to local heritage sites. Come along or get in touch! sheffield@xenia.org.uk

In October 2024 we started the Connect Share Learn project which focusses on supporting Xenia participants to find adult education courses and support to find jobs. During the project providers of adult ed and employment support will be joining us for some Saturday sessions, we will be taking Xenia women to assessments, and our staff will be offering one to one support for any women who requests it. This project is supported by Skills for Londoners.

We’ve had regular cooking (and eating) sessions at Xenia for many years. In 2025 we have started have a session once a quarter called “Xenia Kitchen”. There are help on the last Saturday or the second month of the quarter (February, May, August, November) and are run by Ada. We have held them at Hackney school of Food and at Pulse and Pickle CIC. We cook and eat together and share our food memories and stories.

Since September 2025, we have been running regular courses of swimming lessons for Xenia women. Each course last 10 weeks and consist of regular one hour lessons in a small women only class at Britannia Leisure Centre. This project was set up after many xenia women told us they would like to learn to swim.

In 2024 we have started a project supported by the City Bridge Trust to develop the voices and leadership of Xenia participants. The women who come to Xenia sessions have always participated in the planning and delivery, but through this project we have developed their skills as facilitators . We have held sessions looking at power, protest and local government. We have invited local councillors to join sessions, joined the #LoveESOL campaign, and in 2025 Xenia joined the Million Women Rise march in central London for International Women’s Day.

During the winter 2024-25 we developed a photography project with local Hackney photographer group - Urban Lens 3. Funded by Hackney Cultural Fund and in collaboration with Hackney Circle, Xenia women enjoyed a series of photo walks around the borough, which will lead to an exhibition of our photos at Shoreditch Town Hall in May 2025.

On 9th March 2024 over 70 people attended Xenia’s public launch of our Trailblazing Women map of Hackney. This event was the culmination of an Untold Stories project funded by the GLA. Xenia participants decided to redress the lack of diversity in the public sphere by recognising the contribution of underrepresented women. We also wanted to bring communities in Hackney together by curating a trail which reflects the super-diverse demographic. During the project Xenia participants developed their skills and knowledge by researching stories of women in partnership with Hackney Museum, Hackney Archives and Newington Green Meeting House. They helped design the map with illustrator-as-historian Kremena Dimitrova, recorded the stories and developed their confidence to speak publicly at the launch event. You can download it here: https://www.xenia.org.uk/trailblazing-women-trail

Food brings us together and here at Xenia involving cooking (and eating) in our session is always popular. In 2022 we ran a series of workshops supported by the Near Neighbours fund allowed us to share memories, stories and recipes about food from our culture. In 2024 we began working with the brilliant Hackney School of Food to run cook-a-long sessions at their fantastic kitchen. We supported their projected “Rooted in Food” with many Xenia women going to the monthly cooking sessions.

In 2022 we launched the Xenia walking club. We teamed up with Hackney Walks and the project was supported by Ground Work. Monthly walks allowed us explore Hackney and other areas in London - participants chose the themes of the walks. In 2022, participants from a wide range of backgrounds received training to be walk leaders themselves and can now take on running the walks for other participants. We continue to have regular walking tours in our Xenia sessions.

With the generous support of the Charles S. French Charitable Trust, we ran six weaving workshops in the first quarter of 2022 with participants from migrant, refugee and British backgrounds. The workshops were facilitated by the artist, Raisa Kabir, with the aim of weaving together the stories of the many different women who participate in Xenia workshops through an embodied practice. This provided space for participants to discuss the history and meaning of weaving in different cultures across the world as well as the significance of different forms of weaving in their own lives and the personal experiences they associate it with.

Thanks to funding from the Greater London Authority Xenia ran the “Hackney Museum Take over” in 2020-2021. Working with museum curators & educators, we ran a series of workshops over 3 months through which participants got to explore the museum collections and learn about heritage practice. Participants were supported to find objects of meaning from their own lives, write captions for these and temporarily add them to the museum’s virtual museum collection (covid times!). You can read about some of the objects which participants contributed to the museum collection here.